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-itle;    CnPE  COD  AND  SID  C0L0NY 

917.A4.B768 


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BOOK    9  17.44.B768    c.  1  ^^.  „k,w 

BRIGHAM    #    CAPE    COD    AND    OLD    COLONY 


3  T153  00210E51  7 


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TH 


E    MONUMENT   AT    PROVINCETOWN 


CAPE  COD 

AND 

THE  OLD  COLONY 


BY 


ALBERT  PERRY.  BRIGHAM,  Sc.D, 

PROFESSOR   OF  GEOLOGY   IN   COLGATE   UNIVERSITY 


With  35  Illustrations  and  Maps 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK   AND    LONDON 

Ube  fcnicfterbocfter  ipress 
1921 


^\ 


Copyright,  1920 

BY 

ALBERT  PERRY   BRIGHAM 
Second  Impression 


vO» 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


THIS   STORY  OF   OLD  COLONY   SHORES 

OUTPOST   OF   NEW  ENGLAND 
ENVIRONING   MEN   OF   OLD  ENGLAND 

Is  Inscribed  in  Memory  of 
ANDREW  JOHN   HERBERTSON 

PROFESSOR   OF   GEOGRAPHY   IN   OXFORD   UNIVERSITY 

LOYAL   FRIEND,    TEACHER   AND   INSPIRER   OF   MANY 

CREATIVE   THINKER    IN   THE   REALM   OF  MAN's  RELATION 

TO   THE   EARTH 


PREFACE 

The  author  made  his  first  and  long  deferred 
visit  to  Cape  Cod  in  the  summer  of  19 15. 
There  on  the  highlands  of  Truro,  with  their 
superb  air,  marvelous  views  and  the  freedom 
of  untrammeled  nature,  the  Cape  cast  its  spell 
upon  him.  Fugitive  excursions  on  the  upper 
parts  of  the  great  foreland  revealed  to  him  its 
variety  of  beauty  and  its  significant  history 
sent  him  to  libraries  where  loving  annalists 
had  written  what  they  knew  and  felt  about  the 
land  of  their  fathers. 

Old  as  the  Old  Colony  is  in  the  story  of 
America,  it  is  not  well  known,  and  even  those 
who  visit  it  have  small  means  of  understanding 
its  hills,  lakes  and  shorelines.  Thoreau  saw 
but  a  small  part  of  the  Cape,  and  that  in  a 
remote  time  when  its  physical  evolution  was 
unknown  and  the  human  unfolding  lacked  the 
stages  of  the  last  half  century.  Other  writers 
have  touched  the  life  and  lore  of  special  places, 
leaving  room,  it  would  seem,  for  a  study  on 
broader  lines,  and  savoring  a  little  more  of  the 
order  which  a  student  of  science  would  try  to 
give  it. 


vi  Preface 

The  volume  is  not  a  history  and  it  is  notageo- 
graphy,  though  it  cannot  presume  to  be  quite 
innocent  of  either  subject.  While  explaining 
rather  carefully  the  physical  features  that  lie 
all  about  Cape  Cod  Bay,  the  real  motive  is  the 
way  men  have  used  these  lands  and  waters  and 
come  under  their  influence.  Old  Colony  men 
have  been  bred  to  the  sea,  but  they  have  had 
a  developing  continent  behind  them.  Salt 
waters  and  the  opening  of  wide  lands  have 
interplayed  in  the  destiny  of  the  Pilgrims  and 
their  children.  How  the  first  colonists  and 
those  who  followed  them  have  adjusted  them- 
selves to  the  mobile  conditions  of  nature  and 
of  man,  is  the  theme  of  the  chapters  that 
follow. 

Many  obligations  have  been  incurred — so 
many  indeed,  that  all  must  be  generally  ac- 
knowledged save  one.  Professor  J.  B.  Wood- 
worth  of  Harvard  University  has  for  many 
years  observed  and  written  upon  these  frontier 
lands  of  Massachusetts,  and  has  generously 
placed  his  knowledge  at  the  disposal  of  the 
author.  Chapters  II  and  III  gain  much  in 
fullness  and  accuracy  through  this  contri- 
bution of  friendly  aid. 

A.  P.  B. 

April,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — The  Pilgrims  around  the  Bay         .  i 

II. — The  Origin  of  the  Cape           .         .  32 

III. — The  Changing  Shoreline           .         .  69 

IV. — Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns         .  loi 

V. — On  the  Land     .....  141 

VI. — The  Harvest  of  the  Waters   .         ,  180 

VII. — Roads  and  Waterways              .         .  205 

VIII. — Three  Centuries  of  Population       .  233 

IX. — The  Environment  of  the  Sea           .  255 

Index 279 


Vll 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PA< 

The  Monument  at  Provincetown     Frontispiece 


Clark's  Island  from  Saquish 

Plymouth,  Leyden  Street  in  1622 

Standish  House  and  Monument,  Duxbury 

Map  of  the  Cape  Cod  Region    . 

Triangle  Pond,  in  a  Kettle  Hole,  Sand 
WICH         ...... 


Glacial  Map  of  Cape  Cod  Region     . 

Glacial  Boulder  on  Clark's  Island  . 

The  Clay  Pounds,  Truro   . 

Cliffs  and  Boulder  Beach  of  Manomet 

Forested    Dunes    and    the    Provincetown 
Monument      ..... 

Dunes  of  Sandy  Neck 

The  Wind  Makes  Circles  with  Drooping 
Beach  Grass 

A  Provincetown  Alley 


8 

14 

20 

24 

40 
46 

58 
72 

80 

88 
92 

98 
106 


Illustrations 


Provincetown    Docks    when    the    Tide    is 
Out 

Fishing  Strand,  Chatham    . 

The  Voyage  is  Ended 

Cliffs  at  Highland  Light 

Highland  Light 

The  Canal  


PAGB 


Plymouth,  Leyden  Street  To-day       .         .112 

Rendezvous  Lane  in  Barnstable  Village       120 

Falmouth  across  Shiverick  Pond        .         .128 

Chatham  about  Mill  Pond         .         .         .130 

Street  in  Provincetown     .         .         .         .138 

Great  Marshes  of  Barnstable  .         .         .     148 

Handpicking  of  Cranberries.     The  Neces- 
sary Sandbank  is  Close  at  Hand  .     152 

The  Cranberry  Harvest,  with  the  Scoop       156 

Massachusetts     Forest     Nursery,     Barn- 
stable Bay  and  Sandy  Neck  .         .164 

Ancient  Mill  at  Hyannis  .         .         .         .172 


182 
188 
208 
212 
216 
224 


Population  of  Barnstable  County  and  of 
Provincetown  and  Truro       .         .         .     236 


Illustrations 


XI 


PAGE 


Many  Like  this  on  the  Cape     .         .         .  248 

Shore  Ice  in  the  Bay         ....  262 

QuissET  Harbor  ......  268 

The  Power  that  Changes  the  Shore  276 


Cape  Cod 

and 

The  Old  Colony 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  PILGRIMS  AROUND  THE  BAY 

Standing  on  the  high  moors  of  Truro  on  a 
clear  day,  one  may  see  the  circuit  of  Cape  Cod 
Bay.  Low  on  the  horizon  are  the  woodlands 
that  lie  back  of  Barnstable  and  Sandwich,  the 
cliffs  and  forest  crown  of  Manomet,  the  Plym- 
outh shore  and  the  Standish  monument  rising 
from  Captain's  Hill  in  Duxbury.  Or  if  one 
stands  on  Cole's  Hill  above  Plymouth  Rock, 
he  discerns  twenty-five  miles  eastward,  the 
Pilgrim  monimient  at  Provincetown,  which, 
with  its  dune  foundation,  rises  more  than  three 
hundred  feet  above  the  surface  of  the  Bay. 
At  night,  Highland  Light  with  its  fourfold 


2  Cape  Cod 

flash  will  gleam  across  the  water  in  neighborly 
fashion.  Likewise  from  Sandy  Neck  or  Yar- 
mouth Port,  the  Provincetown  monument 
rises  in  the  north  as  if  out  of  the  sea.  Thus 
Cape  Cod  Bay  is  not  so  vast  as  it  seemed  to 
childish  eyes,  as  they  searched  the  atlas  map, 
to  answer  the  questions  of  location  which  in 
the  old  days  were  called  geography. 

Keeping  our  perch  on  the  highlands  of 
Truro  and  ttirning  eastward — there  is  the  out- 
side of  the  Cape — the  Atlantic  Ocean;  and 
the  imagination,  if  not  the  eye,  reaches  across 
the  waters  to  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  Lisbon,  Cadiz, 
and  Gibraltar.  The  transatlantic  voyager 
does  not  see  the  Cape  in  these  days,  but  for 
many  a  traveler  in  the  early  time  this  fore- 
land was  the  first  to  approach  and  the  last  to 
leave,  and  the  coastwise  traveler  must  always 
pass  it  within  neighborly  distance.  Cape  Cod 
belongs  to  the  ocean  and  it  belongs  to  the 
continent,  a  kind  of  hinge  on  which  the  new 
continent  swung  open  to  the  old,  a  little  wil- 
derness which  quite  unconsciously  became  a 
pivot  of  modern  civilization. 

Geologically  speaking.  New  England  is  old, 
all  but  the  southeast  comer  of  it,  and  that 
is  young.  Historically  however  this  wave- 
washed  bit  of  country  is  old,  as  the  white 
man  counts  time  in  the  new  world.     In  its 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay      3 

shape  and  its  making  here  is  a  unique  foreland. 
The  physiographer  does  not  know  any  annex 
to  any  continent  that  is  just  Hke  it.  Other 
narrow  peninsulas  there  are,  enough  of  them, 
Cornwall  in  England,  Kintyre  in  Scotland,  the 
threadlike  Malay  peninsula,  long  promon- 
tories in  the  fiord  regions  of  Alaska  and  Nor- 
way— but  these  are  all  rocky  and  rugged — - 
nowhere  else  is  there  a  frail,  glacial  peninsula, 
standing  out  seventy  miles  into  an  ocean,  with 
bedrock  so  far  down  that  no  sea  chiseling  and 
no  boring  has  ever  reached  a  square  foot  of  it. 
And  here  Cape  Cod  has  maintained  itself, 
losing  on  its  borders  but  still  surviving,  during 
some  thousands,  perhaps  many  thousands  of 
years,  against  the  fierce  onset  of  the  unhin- 
dered Atlantic. 

The  shores  of  Cape  Cod  Bay,  east,  south 
and  west,  are  the  lands  of  the  Pilgrims. 
Duxbury,  which  has  its  name  from  the  Dux- 
borough  Hall  of  the  Standish  family  in 
England,  is  almost  due  west  from  Province- 
town  and  the  tip  of  the  Cape.  At  Province- 
town,  the  passengers  of  the  Mayflower  landed. 
At  Plymouth,  a  month  later  they  settled.  At 
Duxbury,  some  miles  north  of  Plymouth, 
Miles  Standish  later  chose  his  home,  and  here 
he  and  the  Aldens,  John  and  Priscilla  Mullens 
his  wife,  lie  buried. 


4  Cape  Cod 

The  Pilgrim  monument  on  the  dunes  of 
Provincetown  is  the  outer  sentinel.  At  Dux- 
bury,  is  the  Standish  monument,  the  inner 
landmark  of  the  Bay.  At  the  end  of  Duxbury 
Beach,  are  the  Gurnet  Lights,  answering  to 
Race  Point  and  Highland  Light  on  the  outer 
parts  of  the  Cape.  On  every  side  save  the 
north  this  water  was  environed  with  the  life 
of  the  Pilgrims. 

The  mainland  base  from  which  springs 
Barnstable  Cotmty  or  the  Cape,  is  the  south 
and  eastern  part  of  Plymouth  County.  Like 
the  Cape,  it  is  of  recent  origin.  Geologically, 
the  circuit  of  the  Bay  is  of  one  piece — sands, 
gravels,  light  soils,  moraine  hills,  lakes, 
marshes,  outwash  plains  and  changing  strand 
belts  of  sandy  cliff  and  migrating  dunes.  It 
is  a  frail,  changing  and  perishable  bit  of  country. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  Mayflower  voya- 
gers foimd  the  Cape  Country — we  might 
ahnost  say  that  the  Cape  f  otmd  them  as  it  had 
caught  other  venturesome  voyagers  in  the  first 
twenty  years  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It 
is  easy  to  forget  that  at  the  time  of  the  Leyden 
Pilgrims  a  hundred  and  twenty-eight  years  had 
passed  since  the  first  landfall  of  Colimibus, 
and  the  New  England  shores  were  not  quite 
as  mysterious  to  intelligent  Englishmen  as  we 
are  likely  to  think.     Nor  did  the  Mayflower 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay     5 

discover  the  Plymouth  site  or  even  give  it 
its  name. 

What  the  Vikings  may  have  done  or  seen 
on  this  coast  is  not  a  part  of  onr  story,  nor 
need  we  vex  ourselves  with  historical  enigmas 
concerning  the  voyager  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. We  do  know  that  Bartholomew  Gosnold 
in  1602  anchored  in  Provincetown  Harbor, 
and  gave  to  the  point  of  land  that  incloses  that 
haven,  the  name  of  Cape  Cod.  This  visit 
was  made  when  Gosnold  was  on  his  way  to 
the  attempted  settlement  on  the  Elizabeth 
Islands. 

Martin  Pring,  representing  shipping  inter- 
ests in  the  port  of  Bristol,  came  to  these  waters 
in  1603,  and  remained  six  weeks  in  Plymouth 
Harbor.  He  planted  seeds  to  prove  the  char- 
acter of  the  soil  and  gathered  shiploads  of 
sassafras.  He  called  the  place  Saint  John's 
Harbor.  Winsor's  Narrative  and  Critical  His- 
tory has  a  vivid  passage  emphasizing  this  pre- 
Mayflower  familiarity  which  Englishmen  had 
gained  with  the  Plymouth  country.  *'Thus 
two  years  before  Champlain  explored  Plym- 
outh Harbor,  ten  years  before  the  Dutch 
visited  the  place,  calling  it  Crain  Bay,  and 
seventeen  years  before  the  arrival  of  the  Ley- 
den  pilgrims,  Englishmen  had  become  familiar 
with  the  whole  region  and  had  loaded  their 


6  Cape  Cod 

ships  with  the  fragrant  products  of  the  neigh- 
boring woods." 

A  few  years  after  Fringes  visit,  Champlain, 
an  officer  of  the  DeMonts  expedition,  im- 
pressed by  the  gleaming  sands  of  the  dunes, 
called  the  foreland  Cape  Blanc,  and  in  1614, 
Captain  John  Smith,  thinking  of  his  king, 
named  it  Cape  James.  This  name  did  not 
stick,  but  New  England,  a  designation  first 
used  by  Smith,  fastened  itself  to  the  great 
regions  east  of  the  Hudson  and  Lake  Cham- 
plain.  To  have  made  this  contribution  to  the 
geographic  furnishings  of  the  new  continent 
was  honor  enough  for  any  explorer.  Smith, 
sailing  in  a  shallop  from  Monhegan,  made  a 
map  of  the  coast,  which  he  took  home  to  his 
Prince,  later  Charles  the  First.  It  was  he, 
who,  using  this  map,  named  Plymouth,  Charles 
River  and  Cape  Anne.  Other  names  which  he 
gave  did  not  cling,  but  these  have  remained. 

It  is  probable  enough  that  the  Mayflower 
company  intended  to  settle  farther  south,  in 
the  Hudson  or  Delaware  country,  and  that 
they  were  turned  back  by  the  dangers  of  the 
stormy  seas  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Nan- 
tucket Shoals.  As  this  is  a  problem  for  his- 
torians, we  need  not  rehearse  the  oft-told 
discomforts  and  tragedies  of  the  month  in 
Provincetown  Harbor,  or  the  various  march- 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay     7 

ings  and  discoveries  on  the  lower  Cape,  of 
Captain  Standish  and  his  small  company. 
Here  they  found,  took  and  later  paid  for,  those 
first  stores  of  Indian  corn,  thus  getting  the 
seed  for  the  crops  on  Plymouth  fields,  the  har- 
vests that  saved  the  colony  from  extinction. 
This  was  a  blessing  which  they  could  as  little 
imagine  as  they  could  forecast  the  prairies 
rustling  with  corn  three  hundred  years  later, 
or  the  institutions  of  Ohio,  Wisconsin  and 
Nebraska,  into  which  their  life  and  their  prin- 
ciples were  to  enter  long  generations  after  the 
plots  on  Burial  Hill  had  grown  green  over 
their  bones.  Standish  explored  the  lower  Cape 
as  far  up  as  Nauset,  the  Eastham  of  to-day, 
and  the  next  project  was  that  complete  roimd 
of  the  Bay,  made  after  the  Mayflower  carpen- 
ters had  gotten  the  shallop  ready.  A  month 
had  passed  and  December  was  far  advanced 
before  this  memorable  voyage  was  begun.  We 
who  know  the  Cape  in  smiling  summer  days 
may  imagine  if  we  can,  a  bleak  winter  sea,  a 
few  unknown  savages  on  the  bordering  shore — 
no  home,  no  light,  no  life  guard,  no  guiding 
church  steeple,  and  no  goal  in  the  distance 
save  wintry  fields  and  ice-sheathed  forests. 
In  these  fields  and  out  of  these  forests  in  mid- 
winter homes  were  to  be  built  and  the  founda- 
tions of  a  new  world  laid  down. 


8  Cape  Cod 

If  anybody  knows,  nobody  seems  to  tell  how 
much  or  how  little  this  exploring  party  knew 
of  the  Plymouth  that  had  already  been  so 
many  times  visited.  Whether  accidents  can 
happen  in  great  events  that  shape  destiny, 
perhaps  we  cannot  know.  What  stirs  rs  to 
this  observation  is  the  record  oi  a  blir  'ing 
snowstorm  that  was  falling  around  the  u  ly- 
flower  explorers  as  they  passed  the  ope.iing 
into  Barnstable  Harbor.  Here  between  Sandy 
Neck  Light  and  the  present  Yarmouth  Port, 
is  a  wide  gateway  inviting  a  mariner  with 
small  craft  to  quiet  and  well-protected  waters 
behind  miles  of  barrier  beach,  and  leading  up 
where  green  meadows,  laden  orchards  and 
gracious  homes  now  mark  the  ancient  settle- 
ments of  Barnstable.  If  snow  had  not  been 
coming  down  during  a  particular  half-hour  in 
the  afternoon  of  a  December  day,  in  this  part 
of  Cape  Cod  Bay,  the  beginnings  of  the  Old 
Colony,  of  the  Bay  State,  of  New  England, 
might  ha,ve  been  on  Cape  Cod,  and  sleepy  old 
Barnstable  might  have  been  the  theater  of 
retrospect  and  rejoicing  in  the  festive  days 
of  1920. 

At  length,  in  the  cold  storm  and  dim  light 
of  waning  day,  with  frozen  clothing  and  be- 
numbed fingers,  they  drew  into  the  gateway 
that  opened  between  Pier  Head  on  their  left 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay     9 

and  Saquish  Head  on  their  right.  Pier  Head 
was  the  outer  end  of  Plymouth  Beach,  whose 
long,  narrow  belt  of  sand,  then  more  or  less 
wooded,  they  could  perhaps  follow  southward 
toward  the  point  where  it  springs  from  the 
mainland  north  of  the  Pilgrim  Hotel  of  to-day. 
Saquish,  on  their  right,  was  a  glacial  hill,  an 
island  in  those  days,  not  yet  tied  by  its  thread 
of  sand  to  the  hill  of  the  Gurnet  lights  and  the 
long  Duxbury  Beach.  They  steered  their 
course  northward,  past  Saquish,  and  made 
their  landing  on  Clark's  Island. 

Rather  too  much  has  been  said  and  writ- 
ten and  painted  about  Plymouth  Rock,  or  at 
least  not  enough  heed  has  been  paid  to  Clark's 
Island.  This  was  the  first  landing  place  of 
the  Pilgrims,  if  not  exactly  in  Plymouth  Har- 
bor, in  the  adjoining  waters  of  Duxbury.  Too 
many  good  people  jump  on  the  rock,  or  pho- 
tograph their  friends  under  its  granite  canopy, 
without  knowing  that  there  is  a  Clark's  Island 
or  what  happened  there.  The  island,  like 
Saquish  or  Gurnet,  is  a  glacial  hill,  barely 
three  fourths  of  a  mile  long,  around  which  rise 
at  high  tide  the  shallow  waters  of  Duxbury 
Bay.  There  are  low  cliffs  cut  by  the  waters 
on  its  shores,  a  farm  home  or  two  and  a  few 
trees.  On  the  island  is  a  tablet  marking  the 
first  landing  of  Mayflower  men  on  the  west 


10  Cape  Cod 

side  of  Cape  Cod  Bay,  and  recording  their 
Sunday  rest  and  worship  in  a  spot,  cold 
enough,  bleak  enough,  while  securing  these 
tired  and  hungry,  but  devout  and  determined, 
men  from  savage  attack. 

On  Monday  morning  under  better  skies  the 
advance  guard  of  the  Mayflower  landed  on  the 
site  of  the  real  Plymouth,  but  certainly  they 
were  not  led  by  the  sturdy  maiden  tread  of 
Mary  Chilton.  They  had  found,  and  before 
much  time  passed,  they  had  definitely  chosen 
the  best  place  around  the  bay  for  the  Pilgrim 
home.  We  shall  see  what  they  foimd  there 
and  why  they  picked  the  place.  What  were 
the  things  that  Plymouth  afforded  that  a 
group  of  weary  and  half-frozen  men  from  over 
the  sea  would  want? 

Not  the  least  boon  was  a  good  harbor,  and 
here  they  found  fully  protected  waters.  They 
set  out  for  a  far  remove  from  the  old  world, 
but  isolation  from  it  was  no  part  of  their  plan. 
Relations  they  would  continue  to  have  with 
it  if  their  king  would  let  them,  of  fealty,  of 
blood  kinship,  and  of  trade.  One  could  not 
imagine  a  pioneer  American  colony  planted 
other  than  on  a  tidal  water.  Most  of  Plym- 
outh Harbor  was  and  is  a  clam  flat  at  low 
tide  but  there  was  a  channel,  now  improved 
for  the  larger  craft  of  modern  years.    There 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    1 1 

was  moreover  abundance  of  fish  and  of  shell- 
fish. Even  at  this  early  time,  for  a  full  cen- 
tury, Europeans  had  known  the  fishing 
grounds  along  the  American  shores,  and  while 
we,  conning  over  school  histories,  think  only 
of  the  Cabots  and  Gosnolds  and  Gilberts,  the 
Hudsons  and  John  Smiths,  troops  of  fishing 
ships  had  loaded  their  holds  there  for  the  mar- 
kets of  Europe.  The  Mayflower  people  were 
hungry ;  at  least  they  were  in  grave  danger  of 
being  hungry,  and  the  conveniences  for  clam 
digging  and  cod  fishing  and  eel  catching  that 
here  offered  themselves  were  not  to  be  despised. 

Better  than  all  else  here  was  a  strip  of 
cleared  and  cultivated  land.  Nobody  knows, 
or  ever  can  know  how  many  generations  of  red 
men  had  lived  and  died  there  on  ground  that 
was  opened  by  their  ancestors  and  subject  to 
the  not  ineffective  processes  of  aboriginal  agri- 
culture. What  it  would  have  meant,  in  the 
grip  of  winter,  with  houses  to  build,  the  sick 
to  nurse  and  the  dead  to  bury,  to  prepare 
forest  ground  for  spring  planting — well,  there 
is  no  need  to  imagine,  for  it  would  have  lain 
beyond  human  power. 

It  is  not  in  some  parts  of  Cape  Cod  a  light 
matter  to  secure  a  supply  of  fresh  water,  but 
this  problem  needed  no  resolving  at  Plymouth, 
for  here  was  Town  Brook,  though  the  new- 


12  Cape  Cod 

comers  did  not  then  know  the  large  and  lovely 
water  from  which  it  flows  and  perhaps  they 
did  not  at  first  see  that  here  was  power  for 
a  mill.  There  are  several  other  streams  and 
springs  along  the  Plymouth  shore  which  they 
did  find,  and  count  among  the  good  gifts  of 
Providence. 

There  were  also  ample  forests  at  hand  as 
there  are  to-day.  Among  the  homes  and  mills 
of  busy  Plymouth  one  may  follow  the  tourist 
bent,  and  forget  that  now  a  mile  back  takes 
one  into  a  shady  wilderness  of  trees  and  lakes. 
No  doubt  there  were  larger  trees  than  now, 
for  man  had  not  been  much  abroad  with  the 
axe  and  the  gypsy  moth  had  not  carried  its 
ravages  over  eastern  New  England.  Wood 
was  needed  for  fuel,  lumber  for  homes  and 
timber  for  ships,  and  it  was  standing  but  a 
bowshot  from  their  plantation. 

Whether  the  Plymouth  company  knew  it  at 
first  or  not,  they  had  hit  upon  a  country  almost 
empty  of  savages.  Only  a  few  years  before, 
some  pestilence,  whose  nature  no  one  has  dis- 
covered, swept  away  all  the  ancient  Americans 
of  the  Old  Colony  save  a  few  and  left  their 
haunts  open  and  comparatively  safe  for 
Europeans.  The  little  company  from  Ley  den 
had  burdens  enough  and  dangers  enough,  but 
they  did  not  have  at  first  to  meet  a  horde  of 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    13 

savage  enemies.  Finally,  a  seventh  very  good 
feature  of  Plymouth  was  the  presence  of  a 
hill,  overlooking  the  log  houses  of  the  first 
street,  commanding  the  harbor,  and  best  of 
all,  separated  by  a  valley  from  the  higher 
ground  of  the  forested  interior.  The  advan- 
tages of  this  hill  did  not  escape  the  eye  of 
Standish,  and  here  they  built  their  fort, 
planted  their  cannon,  set  up  their  worship,  and 
after  the  first  sorrowful  buryings  on  Cole's 
Hill,  above  the  rock,  hither  they  brought  their 
dead.  After  all  the  most  storied  spot  in  Plym- 
outh is  not  the  rock,  it  is  the  fortress,  the 
sanctuary,  the  place  of  long  rest — Burial  Hill. 
It  was  right  that  the  Pilgrims  should  settle 
not  on  the  long  and  wave-washed  Cape,  but 
on  the  broader  mainland,  part  of  the  continent, 
that  stretched,  how  far  they  did  not  know, 
westward.  But  that  being  true,  Plymouth  has 
always  had  and  has  to-day,  a  curious  isolation. 
One  may  approach  it  through  Scituate,  and 
Marshfield,  and  find  a  linked  chain  of  settle- 
ments, but  from  any  other  direction  he  must 
go  through — with  apologies  to  the  dwellers  in 
a  few  hamlets — a  wilderness.  This  is  true 
whether  we  choose  Whitman,  or  Middleboro, 
or  Sagamore,  as  our  gateway — in  any  of  these 
we  find  an  entrance  upon  the  Pl3miouth  woods, 
upon  a  country  of  which  perhaps  one  hun- 


14  Cape  Cod 

dredth  part  is  under  the  plough,  and  a  lake, 
or  a  cranberry  bog  is  a  more  common  sight 
than  a  gathering  of  humankind.  The  envi- 
ronment and  background  of  Plymouth,  were 
not  suited  to  make  it  a  Boston,  or  a  Providence, 
or  a  Portland — it  is  Plymouth,  and  of  more 
worth  to  Americans,  a  deeper  foimtain  of  noble 
sentiment  because  it  is  just  Plymouth. 

Of  the  soil,  Bradford  wrote  of  "a  spites 
(spade)  depth  of  excellent  black  mould  and  fat 
in  some  places."  He  names  nine  sorts  of  trees 
and  various  vines,  fruits,  herbs  and  fibers, 
also  sand,  gravel  and  clay,  the  last  like  soap 
and  '  'excellent  for  pots. ' '  Nearly  two  hundred 
acres  were  finally  allotted  to  individuals,  after 
the  colonists  had  experimented  with  commu- 
nistic culture,  and  come  close  to  starvation. 
They  learned  that  even  the  stern  principles 
that  brought  them  over  the  sea  could  not  fully 
control  their  human  qualities  and  that  some 
would  be  lazy  if  they  did  not  work  with  the 
lure  of  private  ownership. 

The  lands  thus  assigned  lay  in  a  strip  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  greatest  width  and  fol- 
lowing the  shore  for  nearly  two  miles.  It  is 
believed  that  the  choice  of  these  lands  by  the 
Indians  was  due  to  the  running  streams  which 
cross  them,  streams  which  afforded  herring 
in  plenty  to  be  used  as  a  fertilizer. 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    15 

Behind  Plymouth  and  Duxbury  Beaches  are 
the  combined  waters  of  Plymouth  Harbor, 
Kingston  Bay  and  Duxbury  Bay,  a  protected 
area  about  eight  miles  from  north  to  south, 
bordered  by  a  much  curved  shoreline.  The 
explorers  liked  the  Jones  River  whose  borders 
form  the  site  of  the  old  village  of  Kingston, 
but  they  did  not  settle  there  because  they 
would  be  farther  from  the  fishing,  ''our  prin- 
cipal profit,"  and  because  the  ground  was  so 
thoroughly  covered  with  forest  that  they 
would  be  in  danger  of  Indian  attack,  "our 
number  being  so  little  and  so  much  ground  to 
clear."  These  terse  quotations  are  from 
Mourt's  Relation. 

The  villages  of  Onset  and  Wareham  stand 
on  northern  arms  of  Buzzards  Bay,  and  are 
sometimes  rather  loosely  thought  of  as  summer 
places  on  the  Cape.  But  what  is  Cape  Cod? 
It  is  the  peninsula  from  Buzzards  Bay  to 
Provincetown.  Strictly  it  should  be  the  Prov- 
incetown  spit  with  its  dunes  and  beaches  and 
the  name  was  at  one  time  so  used,  Province- 
town  Harbor  being  then  the  Cape  Cod  Bay. 
But  the  usage  of  almost  three  hundred  years 
prevails,  the  Cape  is  all  of  that  curved  exten- 
sion of  the  mainland  which  is  Barnstable 
County. 

The  Old  Colony — what  is  that?    It  is  Cape 


i6  Cape  Cod 

Cod  and  a  piece  of  the  adjoining  mainland 
from  a  point  on  the  south  shore  between  Scitu- 
ate  and  Cohasset,  and  following  a  line  rtmning 
thence  to  Narragansett  Bay,  thus  taking  in 
parts  of  eastern  Rhode  Island.  Even  Plym- 
outh is  sometimes  thought  to  be  on  the  Cape. 
Untrue  as  this  is,  there  is  close  kinship  both 
of  the  physical  and  human  sort.  The  same 
people  are  there  and  much  of  Plymouth 
County  has,  like  the  Cape,  a  foundation  of 
glacial  drift,  so  deep  that  the  hard  rocks  be- 
neath the  cover  have  never  been  found. 

Hence  the  Cape  and  the  adjoining  territory 
form  what  a  modem  geographer  would  call  a 
natural  region.  It  is  a  tinit  in  its  physical  evo- 
lution— in  its  drift  subsoil,  its  surface  and  in 
climate  and  flora,  and  it  takes  in  the  vital 
parts  of  the  Old  Colony,  Plymouth,  Kingston, 
Duxbury  and  the  whole  chain  of  Pilgrim  places 
from  Sandwich  and  Falmouth  to  Barnstable, 
Nauset  and  Provincetown. 

The  names  Old  Colony  and  Plymouth  Col- 
ony mean  the  same  thing.  The  domain  in- 
cluded all  of  Plymouth  County  except  Hing- 
ham  and  Hull  and  a  small  part  of  Brockton. 
It  took  in  also  all  of  Barnstable  County,  all  of 
Bristol  County  and  several  towns  in  Rhode 
Island,  but  did  not  include  Nantucket  or 
Martha's  Vineyard.     The  description  of  the 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    17 

Old  Colony  in  this  volume  limits  itself  to  the 
Cape  and  the  coastal  strip  of  Plymouth,  and 
does  not  take  in  the  bedrock  country  lying  on 
the  west. 

Tourists  swarm  in  Plymouth  in  summer 
days.  If  they  come  by  motor  car  or  on  the 
daily  excursion  boat  from  Boston,  they  see  the 
rock,  spend  a  half-hour  among  the  relics  of 
Pilgrim  Hall,  go  up  Ley  den  Street  and  look 
at  the  headstones  of  Burial  Hill,  drive  around 
the  Pilgrim  monimient,  and,  let  us  hope,  im- 
agine the  Mayflower  at  anchor  in  the  harbor. 
A  few  go  back  to  Scrooby  and  Leyden  and  the 
older  Plymouth,  and  try  to  make  their  own 
the  first  humble  homes,  the  sorrows  of  the 
first  year  and  the  joy  of  the  first  thanksgiving. 

But  it  is  better  to  sleep  in  Plymouth,  many 
times  if  it  may  be,  and  to  live  into  its  shores, 
its  streets,  its  hills  and  its  ancient  homes,  to 
find  in  its  modest  public  library  the  shelves 
in  the  comer  that  are  full  of  Plymouth  books, 
and  thus  to  share  the  loving  industry  and  the 
long  memories  that  have  counted  no  detail  of 
topography  or  genealogy  or  local  annals  too 
small  to  be  put  into  record.  One  can  find  in 
almost  any  town,  especially  in  any  New 
England  town,  the  right  people,  those  who 
know  and  revere  their  past,  who  will  share 
their  lore  with  the  stranger.    They  are  children 


1 8  Cape  Cod 

of  their  soil,  born  of  the  blood  of  those  men 
and  women  who  crossed  the  sea  and  laid  the 
foundations.  Let  Americans  fill  days  in  Plym- 
outh, and  find  their  Americanism  thereafter 
true  and  deep.  Whatever  may  happen  with 
the  swift  changes  of  the  future,  the  towns  of 
the  Old  Colony  have  not  lost  their  past,  and 
it  is  inscribed  deeper  than  are  the  writings  on 
memorial  tablets;  it  is  shrined  in  the  harbor, 
in  the  outer  beach,  in  Gurnet  and  Clark's 
Island  and  Town  Brook,  in  the  old  cornfields 
where  thousands  of  people  live  to-day,  and  in 
the  hills,  woods  and  waters  of  Billington  Sea. 

Only  two  miles  from  the  Pilgrim  spring  and 
the  homes  of  the  Brewsters  and  Bradf ords  at 
the  Leyden  Street  crossing,  the  closed  waters 
of  the  harbor  end  and  the  bouldery  cliffs  and 
wooded  heights  of  Manomet  begin.  Directly 
behind  the  town  a  walk  of  barely  more  than  a 
mile  carries  one  along  the  full  course  of  Town 
Brook.  The  wonder  is  that  the  Plymouth  peo- 
ple, fresh  from  their  little  England,  did  not 
call  it  a  river,  for  it  is  a  strong  and  perennial 
stream,  though  the  factories  on  its  banks  have 
partly  outgrown  this  source  of  power. 

A  delightful  woodland  of  moraine  hills,  sur- 
rounds the  source  of  the  Brook,  which  is  Bil- 
lington Sea,  and  these  woods,  or  parts  of  them, 
are  the  great  public  park  of  the  enlarging  town. 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    19 

With  all  its  beauty,  its  restful  seclusion,  and 
its  wide  waters,  this  playground  seems  to  be 
little  used.  It  is  not  easy  to  reach,  and  per- 
haps after  all  the  look  of  Plymouth  is  and  al- 
ways will  be  toward  the  sea.  It  is  not  easy  to 
wean  a  people  from  salt  water.  And  it  may 
be,  if  the  Plymouth  folk  were  less  conserva- 
tive, that  they  would  have  changed  the  name 
of  their  largest  lake,  for  John  Billington  was 
not  saintly,  living  though  he  did  with  Brewster 
and  Bradford  as  his  nearest  neighbors.  The 
Billington  blood  seems  to  have  been  turbulent, 
for  the  elder  son  of  the  unhappy  pilgrim  was 
the  boy  that  was  lost  in  the  wilderness  of 
Nauset  and  recovered  by  Standish  in  a  historic 
excursion  down  the  Cape;  and  it  was  Francis 
Billington,  the  younger  son,  who  climbed  a 
tall  tree,  and  discovered  the  inland  water 
which  now  bears  his  family  name. 

From  Plymouth  before  many  years  had 
passed,  there  was  a  migration  northward,  but 
it  did  not  go  far,  being  confined  to  the  borders 
of  Kingston  and  Duxbury  Bays,  and  the 
neighboring  town  of  Marshfield.  We  should 
look  vainly  on  Burial  Hill  for  the  memorials 
of  William  Brewster,  Miles  Standish  and  of 
John  Alden  and  Priscilla.  These  are  found 
in  Duxbury,  whither  these  Mayflower  families 
betook  themselves  to  establish  their  homes. 


20  Cape  Cod 

Here  also  is  the  Standish  cottage  built  by  the 
Pilgrim  soldier's  son,  and  here  on  Captain's 
Hill,  in  a  rough  open  plot  at  the  summit  of  the 
pine-clad  slopes,  is  the  Standish  monument. 
Duxbury  was  settled  in  1630,  and  the  nearer 
Kingston,  the  ''North  End  of  Plymouth'' 
dates  seven  years  later.  Here  lived  a  de- 
scendant of  William  Bradford,  and  here  was 
kept  the  Bradford  manuscript  of  Pilgrim 
history  before  it  began  its  mysterious  jour- 
ney to  England,  and  its  long  repose  in  Brit- 
ish archives. 

Farther  north  in  Marshfield  lived  Governor 
Josiah  Winslow,  the  first  American-born  ruler 
of  Plymouth  Colony,  and  here  his  father, 
Governor  Edward  Winslow  of  the  Mayflower, 
was  married  to  Susannah  White.  This  was 
the  first  marriage  in  the  new  colony,  being 
celebrated  in  1621.  Marshfield  also  holds  the 
grave  of  Peregrine  White,  born  upon  the  May- 
flower during  its  sojourn  across  the  Bay  in 
Provincetown  Harbor,  in  1620. 

These  settlements  in  the  north  were  little 
more  than  local  annexes  to  the  parent  group 
at  Plymouth,  but  soon  began  a  movement 
down  the  Cape,  which  did  not  reach  its  goal 
until  Provincetown  was  incorporated  in  1727. 
From  its  first  permanent  settlement,  however, 
the  whole  Cape  was  a  part  of  Plymouth  Col- 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay   21 

ony,  until  in  1692  the  latter  was  absorbed  in 
the  royal  province  of  Massachusetts. 

In  the  years  just  before  1640  movements 
began  in  the  direction  of  the  Cape.  There  was 
discontent  with  the  conditions  of  living  in 
Plymouth  and  this  led  some  to  think  of  moving 
the  whole  colony  to  Nauset,  the  present  East- 
ham.  The  unwisdom  of  such  a  change  was 
discovered  in  time  to  avert  inevitable  failure, , 
**for  this  place  was  about  fifty  miles  from  hence 
and  at  an  outside  of  the  country  remote  from 
all  society,  also  that  it  would  prove  so  straight 
as  it  would  not  be  competent  to  receive  the 
whole  body,  much  less  be  capable  of  any  addi- 
tion or  increase."  Thus  in  old-style  phrase 
is  gathered  the  whole  argument,  and  it  is 
confirmed  by  seeing  how  the  map  of  the  Cape 
narrows  between  Orleans  and  Wellfleet. 

Still  the  bare-looking  fields  of  this  wind-swept 
plain  were  esteemed  productive  in  those  days, 
and  in  1644  the  more  restless  spirits  migrated 
to  Nauset  and  received  a  grant  of  lands  there. 
But  these  men  did  not  make  the  first  settle- 
ment on  the  Cape.  This,  as  was  natural,  was 
accomplished  near  the  base  of  the  Cape  with 
easy  approach  from  Plymouth,  within  a  couple 
of  miles  of  the  new  canal,  in  the  town  of 
Sandwich.  This  oldest  town  on  Cape  Cod  was 
settled  in  1637.    In  going  from  Plymouth  we 


22  Cape  Cod 

now  first  cross  the  town  of  Bourne,  but  this 
town  is  young,  having  been  set  off  from  Sand- 
wich during  the  last  century. 

Sandwich,  however,  though  it  has  to  this 
day  people  of  Mayflower  blood,  was  not  main- 
ly set  up  by  Plymouth  people.  Hither  came 
between  twenty  and  thirty  settlers  from  Lynn 
and  Saugus,  among  them  the  Freeman  family, 
a  name  which  remains  on  the  Cape  both  in  liv- 
ing representatives  and  in  an  honorable  fame. 
Here  belongs  the  author  of  that  great  history 
of  Barnstable  County  which  brought  the  story 
of  the  Cape  down  to  the  decade  following  the 
middle  of  the  last  century.  Miles  Standish  and 
John  Alden  were  the  surveyors  who  established 
the  bounding  lines  of  this  old  town,  whose 
oldest  structure,  the  Tupper  House,  is  said 
to  go  back  to  the  year  of  the  founders,  1637. 

The  village  of  Sandwich  is  about  sixteen 
miles  in  an  air  line  from  the  municipality  of 
Plymouth,  and  if  we  except  the  village  of 
Sagamore,  which  is  close  to  Sandwich,  there 
is  not  yet  a  settlement  larger  than  a  hamlet 
in  this  long  stretch  of  wooded  wilderness. 
But  there  was  time  in  those  days  for  long 
walking  journeys  and  a  score  of  miles  by  a 
forest  trail  were  not  more  baffling  to  the  pio- 
neer than  is  a  three-mile  tramp  to  the  coddled 
traveler  of  to-day. 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    23 

The  settlement  of  Barnstable,  the  county 
seat  of  Barnstable  County,  dates  two  years 
from  the  founding  of  Sandwich,  or  1639. 
Standish  had  come  into  Barnstable  Bay,  in 
his  search  for  the  lost  John  Billington  in  July, 
1 62 1,  and  thus  we  know  that  for  nearly  a 
score  of  years,  the  dunes  of  Sandy  Neck,  the 
green  of  the  great  marshes,  and  the  wooded 
hills  that  rose  to  the  southward,  were  familiar 
to  the  Plymouth  men.  Here  Standish  had  met 
lyanough,  the  friendly  Indian  chief  whose 
name  appears  in  the  modern  Hyannis,  which 
stands  on  the  shore  of  the  sound,  as  Barnstable 
village  is  on  the  shore  of  the  Bay.  As  the 
Cape  narrows  going  eastward,  it  came  about 
that  Barnstable  town  reaches  across  from  one 
water  to  the  other. 

Yarmouth  in  like  fashion  spans  across  from 
Bay  to  Sound  and  was  contemporary  with 
Barnstable  in  its  beginnings;  indeed  it  pre- 
ceded Barnstable  a  few  months  in  the  year 
1639,  in  being  represented  in  the  General 
Court.  It  was  the  parent  town  from  which 
Harwich,  Chatham,  Dennis  and  Brewster  were 
set  off. 

The  earliest  of  this  quartet  of  towns  to  be- 
gin a  life  of  its  own  was  Harwich  and  it  was 
settled,  not  by  emigrants  from  Yarmouth,  but 
by  removals  from  Plymouth,  Eastham  and 


34  Cape  Cod 

other  places  in  1647,  Eastham  being  then 
known  as  Nauset.  Harwich  did  not  become 
a  separate  town  until  1694  and  it  included 
what  is  now  Brewster  for  more  than  one  hun- 
dred years  from  the  date  of  its  settlement,  not 
of  its  incorporation,  for  we  find  Brewster  a 
town  during  the  American  Revolution.  An 
unwelcome  reminder  of  this  to  Brewster  people 
is  said  to  be  the  fact  that  this  was  the  only 
town  on  the  Cape  that  paid  a  demand  of  the 
British,  for  a  large  sum  of  money,  in  one  day 
collected  and  paid  over  to  the  foe. 

The  long-used  Indian  name  of  Nauset  was 
in  1 65 1  changed  by  the  General  Court  to 
Eastham,  and  until  the  settling  of  Harwich 
in  1694  this  was  the  only  town  on  the  Cape 
below  Yarmouth.  In  1762,  when  Eastham 
had  seen  more  than  a  century  of  development, 
it  was  the  foremost  town  in  Barnstable 
County,  in  population,  wealth  and  general  im- 
portance. Eastham  was  the  parent  town  of 
Orleans  on  the  south  and  of  Wellfleet  and 
Truro  in  the  north.  Wellfleet  was  set  off  in 
1763,  and  given  a  corporate  life  of  its  own,  the 
boundary  line  between  the  two  towns  being 
established  in  1765. 

Thus  the  white  man,  having  passed  in  the 
autumn  explorations  of  the  Mayflower  com- 
pany, from  Provincetown  around  the  inner 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    25 

shore  to  Plymouth,  was  now,  as  the  decades 
followed  each  other,  creeping  down  the  Cape. 
Truro,  whose  Indian  name  was  Pamet,  was 
settled  about  1700  and  to  it  in  1705  was 
given  the  name  of  Dangerfield.  This  desig- 
nation, appropriate  then  and  as  long  as  sail- 
ing ships  held  the  seas,  was  changed  to  Truro 
in  1709. 

The  first  shall  be  last — ^might  have  been 
spoken  of  Provincetown  and  the  rest  must  be 
added — the  last  shall  be  first.  So  late  as  1 7 14, 
it  was  merely  a  precinct  of  Truro,  whose  lands 
even  now  extend  beyond  High  Head,  past  the 
old  East  Harbor  to  the  very  gateway  of  Prov- 
incetown. To-day  the  long  crescent  of  the 
Cape's  finest  harbor  has  its  thousands  of  peo- 
ple, and  Truro  has  seen  her  population 
dwindle  to  a  bare  six  hundred.  The  early 
days  did  not  invite  settlement  on  the  sandy 
tip  of  the  Cape.  Whatever  the  Pilgrims  hoped 
to  achieve  in  the  fisheries,  their  prime  desire 
was  to  get  their  living  out  of  the  soil.  This 
is  the  iron  rule  for  a  remote  and  isolated 
colony.  There  was  no  Boston  market,  no 
Genesee  country,  no  expanse  of  prairie,  no 
railway  and  no  highway.  Their  quest  was  for 
soil,  water,  shelter  from  storm,  and  protection 
from  the  red  man.  This  they  found  in  Plym- 
outh  and  then   they  turned   about   to   see 


26  Cape  Cod 

where  and  how  they  could  use  the  foreland 
which  lay  on  this  ocean  side. 

Like  all  the  rest  of  the  Cape,  the  lower  end, 
with  its  shifting  dunes  and  beaches  and  the 
great  curving  spit  that  incloses  the  harbor, 
was  iinder  the  control  of  the  Plymouth  colony, 
until  all  was  joined  to  Massachusetts.  Plym- 
outh ruled  the  early  community  and  for  a 
consideration  granted  fishing  rights  to  stran- 
gers. The  lands  of  even  the  village  of  Prov- 
incetown  were  long  held  by  the  Colony  and 
then  by  the  State,  and  not  until  1893,  were 
they  conveyed  by  a  special  statute  to  the  town. 
The  name  indicates  the  original  relation  to  the 
Plymouth  sovereignty.  The  incorporation  as 
Province  Town  occured  in  1727.  While  the 
Colony  and  Commonwealth  were  long  to  own 
the  land  on  which  the  very  homes  stood,  there 
was  a  measure  of  compensation  in  allowing 
that  the  peculiar  situation  of  the  people 
should  exempt  them  from  taxation  and  from 
military  service. 

No  town  in  the  Pilgrim  country  has  nobler 
hills,  more  fertile  fields,  or  greater  wealth  of 
lovely  shoreline,  than  Falmouth — ancient  Fal- 
mouth it  may  be  truly  called;  for  in  1660,  the 
first  settlers,  said  to  be  from  Barnstable,  came 
along  the  shore  of  Vineyard  Sound  in  boats, 
and  landed  on  the  edge  of  the  outwash  plain. 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    27 

between  Oyster  Pond  and  Fresh  Pond.  Here 
they  made  their  first  encampment  in  the  edge 
of  flat  fields,  now  dotted  with  mansions,  and 
luxuriant  with  the  flowers,  hedges,  lawns  and 
gardens  of  simimer  residents.  Thus  the  Fal- 
mouth pioneers  were  quite  in  the  running  with 
the  other  towns  of  the  upper  Cape.  If  they 
were  a  little  off  the  main  line  of  Pilgrim  move- 
ment, they  have  well  evened  the  scale  to-day, 
with  the  thronged  highways  of  the  outer  shore, 
the  Port  of  Woods  Hole  and  the  ships  that 
never  fail  the  eye  on  Vineyard  Sound. 

Here  was  a  peculiar  people,  singled  out  from 
an  ancient  environment  in  the  pursuit  of  an 
ideal,  pushing  across  the  seas  to  a  remote  and 
wintry  wilderness,  not  for  gain  but  to  set  up 
homes  and  live  on  the  order  of  their  conviction. 
They  found  a  peculiar  land,  unlike  in  signifi- 
cant matters  even  the  greater  part  of  New 
England,  having  its  own  qualities  of  soil,  its 
variant  mantle  of  vegetation,  its  type  of  cli- 
mate and  exposed  to  the  sea  as  no  other 
grounds  in  New  England  are  exposed,  except- 
ing only  Nantucket  and  Martha's  Vineyard, 
which  are  of  the  same  piece  and  have  gone 
with  the  Cape  in  physical  unfolding. 

The  Pilgrim  built  his  house,  planted  his 
garden  and  subdued  his  field.  On  this  sub- 
stratum of  material  support,  he  set  up  his 


28  Cape  Cod 

churches  and  schools,  developed  civil  govern- 
ment, converted  the  Indians  if  he  could  and 
fought  them  if  he  must.  Rarely  did  he  live  as 
much  as  three  miles  from  the  ocean  border, 
his  environment  was  as  truly  the  sea  as  the 
land,  and  he  lived,  as  a  distinguished  writer 
of  American  history  has  called  it,  an  ''amphib- 
ious" life.^ 

Gradually  the  Old  Colony  man  shifted  his 
major  activities  from  the  land  to  the  sea,  de- 
veloped fishing  and  whaling  on  a  large  scale 
and  built  up,  especially  on  the  Cape,  many 
centers  of  the  marine  industry,  inaugurating 
a  carrying  trade  that  coasted  the  shores  of  the 
Americas,  reached  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
to  the  ports  of  Europe  and  Africa,  and  found 
its  remote  goals  in  every  great  harbor  of  the 
antipodes.  Truly  did  a  venerable  man  of 
Sandwich  in  the  summer  that  goes  before  this 
chronicle  tell  the  writer,  that  in  Singapore, 
Batavia,  Melbourne,  and  Sidney  he  found  men 
living  that  had  been  bred  on  Cape  Cod. 

These  sailors  and  ship's  captains  that  put 
forth  from  Barnstable,  Yarmouth,  Brewster, 
Dennis,  Falmouth,  Chatham,  Wellfleet,  Truro, 
and  Provincetown,  learned  the  wide  world, 
inured  themselves  to  hardship,  met  the  perils 
of  shipwreck  and  filled  the  annals  of  the  Cape 

*  Professor  Edward  Channing  of  Harvard  University. 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    29 

with  a  glory  all  their  own.  Those  who  re- 
mained at  home  tilled  the  small  fields,  brought 
in  their  cargoes  of  fish  from  the  Bay,  watched 
for  the  return  of  whalers  and  merchantmen, 
and  went  down  to  the  shore  to  harvest  the 
wealth  that  was  thrown  on  the  strand  when 
unhappy  mariners  lost  their  ships  in  the  rough 
waters  of  the  outer' sea. 

The  sand  drifted  over  their  fields,  they  saw 
the  cliffs  melt  into  the  hungry  waters,  they 
put  their  gardens  in  the  valleys  and  kettle- 
hole  basins  to  fend  off  the  destroying  force  of 
Atlantic  gales.  They  saw  the  sails  on  the  ho- 
rizon, they  read  the  signs  of  the  sky.  When 
they  had  finished  looking  for  their  brethren 
who  never  came  back  they  set  up  slabs  of  slate 
in  their  burial  yards,  recording  the  names  of 
older  and  younger  men  whose  bodies  were 
swept  on  alien  shores  or  resting  on  the  bottom 
of  the  sea.  Their  sun  rose  in  the  sea  and  out 
on  the  Cape  it  set  in  the  sea  as  well.  They 
were  on  the  land  but  scarcely  of  it. 

The  streams  of  the  Old  Colony  were  few  and 
short  and  the  supply  of  fuel  was  precarious  as 
the  population  grew  and  the  scanty  forests 
went  down.  There  was  no  fuel  in  the  groimd 
save  the  peat  which  could  be  had  only  with 
excessive  toil,  so  they  set  up  windmills  and 
groimd  their  grist  by  the  winds  that  drove 


30  Cape  Cod 

their  sails  on  the  waters.  And  when  they  must 
salt  their  fish,  they  erected  vats  under  the 
sun  and  drew  these  supplies  also  from  the  sea. 

Thus  they  breathed  the  breath  of  the  ocean, 
found  their  highway  on  its  surface  and  their 
living  in  its  waters  or  beyond  them,  paid  their 
good  ministers  with  quintals  of  fish  and  with 
stranded  whales,  filled  their  corner  shelves 
with  shells  and  corals  and  sent  the  men  that 
the  sea  did  not  claim  to  Lexington  and  Bunker 
Hill. 

The  Cape  is  not  like  this  to-day.  That  was 
the  old  Cape  that  Timothy  Dwight  described 
more  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  the  Cape 
that  Thoreau  saw  in  his  fugitive  visits  of 
sixty-five  and  seventy  years  ago.  There  was 
no  railway,  no  wire,  no  steam  service  across 
the  Bay — only  sand  roads  and  isolation. 

To-day,  the  man  of  the  Cape  goes  by  the  Old 
Colony  railroad,  though  he  no  longer  so  names 
it,  and  its  trains  are  slow  enough  not  wholly  to 
destroy  the  repose  of  old  time.  There  are 
roads  of  macadam  and  tar  and  thousands  of 
motor  cars,  stimmer  hotels,  shore  cottages, 
refrigerating  plants,  silted  harbors,  fishing 
specialized  and  localized,  overseas  trade  long 
dead,  wheat  and  flour  and  steaks  and  fuel  from 
the  continent  lying  behind,  restricted  and 
specialized  agriculture,  the  artist  colony  and 


The  Pilgrims  Around  the  Bay    31 

the  Portugee — such  the  Cape.  But  the  sea 
is  there,  the  surf,  the  dunes  of  the  shore,  the 
winter  gales,  the  kaleidoscope  colors,  the  sun- 
rise from  Spain,  and  in  no  small  measure,  left 
over  for  the  fourth  Pilgrim  century,  the  simple 
life,  the  frugality,  kindness  and  honor  of  the 
first  generation,  whose  descendants  in  the 
eighth,  ninth  and  tenth  removes,  have  passed 
on  and  paused  in  New  York,  the  Mississippi 
Valley  and  the  Pacific  West. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  CAPE 

It  is  a  singular  fate  that  Cape  Cod,  a  part  of 
the  oldest  colony  of  New  England,  is  hardly 
better  known  on  its  physical  side  than  the 
coast  of  Labrador.  Vague  notions  prevail  of 
its  surface,  its  shorelines  and  its  origin.  Its 
rocks  and  its  soils  are  the  victims  of  observa- 
tions fantastically  untrue,  and  its  relations  to 
the  glacial  invasion  have  tripped  up  many 
writers,  who  in  their  zestful  appreciation  of 
the  human  side  of  the  Cape  have  desired  not 
to  neglect  its  prehistoric  foundations. 

Freeman,  in  the  Falmouth  chapter  of  his 
history  of  Cape  Cod,  refers  to  "A  plentiful 
supply  of  granite  from  which  exportations  are 
sometimes  made.'*  This  must  have  been  read 
by  another  good  minister,  who,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  town 
of  Falmouth  prayed — "May  its  hills  which 
Thou  hast  made  of  granite  be  utilized  for  im- 
provements and  its  waters  be  filled  with  the 
tribes  of  the  sea."    We  may  believe  that  the 

32 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  33 

second  of  these  devout  petitions  was  answered, 
and  we  may  pardon  the  hazy  notions  of  the  geol- 
ogy, as  we  must  those  of  a  later  writer  who 
says  truly  enough  of  Sandwich  that  there  is 
plenty  of  rock  in  the  landscape  but  proceeds 
to  say  also  that  ''it  is  the  backbone  of  the 
Cape  jutting  through."  This  invites  a  rather 
useful  observation  at  the  outset.  Underneath 
the  soils  and  glacial  drift  of  many  regions  of 
oiir  continent,  tinder  the  subsoils  everywhere, 
and  even  under  all  of  the  sea  floor,  is  what 
the  geologist  knows  as  bedrock,  the  more  con- 
solidated and  compact  earth  material  which 
makes  up  most  of  the  earth's  crust.  There 
is  no  bedrock  to  be  seen  on  the  Cape,  or  on 
that  part  of  the  mainland  in  Plymouth  County 
from  which  the  Cape  springs.  It  is  not  to  be 
found  in  any  seacliff,  by  any  lake  shore,  or  in 
any  roadside  ledge.  There  are  no  stone 
quarries,  and  no  boring  has  ever  gone  deep 
enough  in  this  region  to  pierce  the  loose-tex- 
tured earth  waste  and  find  the  solid  foimda- 
tion  below  it.  We  may  locate  Brant  Rock,  on 
the  south  shore  of  the  town  of  Marshfield; 
then  draw  a  line  southward  reaching  Buzzards 
Bay  at  some  point  between  the  villages  of 
Wareham  and  Onset,  and  having  fixed  this 
line  in  our  minds,  we  shall  find  no  bedrock 
east  of  it  in  that  part  of  Plymouth  County ;  or 


34  Cape  Cod 

in  the  whole  of  Barnstable  County,  which  is 
the  Cape.  The  rock  is  under  the  stirf  ace,  but 
how  far  under,  we  do  not  know.  Hard  rocks 
are  there  in  plenty,  in  surface  fragments,  in 
stones  little  and  big,  but  these  recite  another 
story. 

Outside  of  papers  of  a  learned  sort,  in  jour- 
nals and  reports  of  surveys,  nobody  has  told 
us  where  the  glaciers  were,  to  which  so  much 
is  credited,  or  how  big  they  were,  or  whither 
they  moved,  or  how  they  were  the  means  of 
accumulating  the  mass  of  land  waste  that  we 
call  the  Cape. 

Here  let  a  devotee  of  earth  science  put  in  a 
mild  protest  against  further  emphasis  on  cer- 
tain analogies  drawn  from  parts  of  the  human 
form.  Rather  vivid  they  were  when  first  used 
by  a  literary  genius,  compounding  in  himself 
the  naturalist  and  the  philosopher,  but  weari- 
some and  trite  after  being  solemnly  quoted  and 
paraded  in  every  book  or  light  essay  on  the 
Cape  for  some  fifty  years  or  more.  We  may 
learn  more,  and  do  the  imagination  no  violence 
if  we  find  other  ways  in  which  to  describe  the 
curving  shores  and  the  hilly  relief  of  this 
foreland. 

One  writer,  with  painfiil  ingenuity,  finds 
here  a  ''vast  curling  whiplash,"  and  we  are 
compelled   to   look  at   the  giant   who   had 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  35 

^'whirled  it  about  his  head  and  dropped  it 
into  the  sea."  We  can  afford,  without  loss  to 
fancy  or  poetic  feeHng,  to  drop  these  fantastic 
and  crude  ways  of  picturing  geographic  forms, 
which  too  easily  are  a  screen  for  our  geographic 
ignorance.  When  we  have  put  the  Cape's  end 
into  a  class  with  Rockaway  and  Sandy  Hook, 
and  have  followed  them  in  the  making,  we 
shall  not  lose  any  of  nature's  idealism  if  we 
learn  to  call  them  hooked  spits,  and  we  shall 
have  gained  some  real  and  unf  orgetable  knowl- 
edge of  that  marvelous  zone  where  sea  and 
land  meet. 

The  eastern  part  of  Plymouth  Coimty,  bor- 
dering Cape  Cod  Bay  and  reaching  across  to 
the  head  of  Buzzards  Bay  is  a  piece  of  country 
quite  like  Cape  Cod  in  surface,  in  soil,  in  its 
vegetation,  in  its  physical  evolution  and  in  its 
human  story.  From  this  Plymouth  belt  there 
springs  out  into  the  sea  from  the  vicinity  of 
the  Canal,  the  Cape,  southward  to  Woods 
Hole,  eastward  to  Chatham,  then  northward 
to  Provincetown — in  all  if  we  follow  the  gen- 
eral course  of  the  outer  shore,  a  distance  of 
about  one  hundred  miles:  if  we  follow  the 
inner  shore,  about  fifty  miles.  The  Cape  is 
wide  on  the  west,  but  narrows  as  we  go  east- 
ward and  still  more  toward  the  north,  tmtil  it 
offers  about  the  northern  end  an  exposure  to 


36  Cape  Cod 

the  sea  which  is  unique  on  the  mainland  of 
the  North  American  continent. 

Along  the  Canal  and  the  eastern  shore  of 
Buzzards  Bay,  Cape  Cod  is  more  than  twenty 
miles  wide.  Such  is  the  span  from  Cape  Cod 
Bay  to  the  end  of  Penzance,  pointing  toward 
the  chain  of  the  Elizabeth  Islands.  From  the 
town  of  Barnstable  eastward  the  width  is  from 
six  to  eight  miles,  though  in  places  the  reach 
from  tide  to  tide  is  much  less.  On  the  northern 
extension  of  the  Cape,  the  average  is  four  or  five 
miles  northward  into  Wellfleet,  with  a  drop  to 
two  miles  at  North  Truro  and  less  than  a  mile 
as  we  approach  the  village  of  Provincetown. 

How  little  such  figures  tell  about  the  Cape, 
is  revealed  by  any  good  map  which  shows  the 
ins  and  outs  of  the  shoreline.  If  we  should  go 
over  from  the  head  of  Bass  River,  to  the 
nearest  tidal  run  into  the  Bay,  the  portage 
would  be  little  more  than  a  mile  long.  And  if 
in  Truro,  we  should  follow  the  tidal  channel 
of  what  by  custom  is  known  as  the  Pamet 
River,  a  few  steps  would  take  us  over  a  ridge 
of  dune  sand  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  Bradford 
in  his  history  of  the  Plymouth  Plantation  re- 
coimts  the  going  to  the  rescue  of  a  British 
ship  in  1627,  crossing  the  Cape  by  a  portage 
a  little  more  than  two  miles  long  from  the  head 
of  Namskaket  Creek  in  the  town  of  Orleans. 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  37 

There  is  no  precise  use  of  language  in  taking 
the  whole  of  the  venerable  County  of  Barn- 
stable, which  is  no  inconsiderable  part  of  the 
State  of  Massachusetts,  and  calling  it  a  cape. 
By  all  the  proprieties  of  geography,  it  is,  and 
we  suppose  should  be  called,  a  peninsula.  But 
who  would  have  it  so?  Rather  do  we  yield  to 
the  authority  of  three  centuries  of  use,  and 
call  it  with  the  millions  who  know  this  as  his- 
toric ground,  by  the  name,  as  short  as  it  is 
simple  and  full  of  meaning — Cape  Cod. 

Back  of  Plymouth  lies  a  range  of  hills,  which 
carries  the  eye  southward,  with  forested  slopes 
and  crests,  along  the  Bay  shore  to  the  Canal. 
At  the  Canal  there  is  a  break,  but  no  discon- 
tinuance. Crossing  the  narrow  and  steep- 
sided  natural  valley  that  now  sees  the  passing 
of  ships,  the  hills  continue  southward  and  also 
eastward.  To  the  south,  the  hill  belt,  three 
to  four  miles  in  width,  extends  to  Woods  Hole. 
Monument  Beach,  Cataimiet,  North  Falmouth, 
and  West  Falmouth,  all  centers  of  simimer  life, 
lie  in  its  western  fringe,  where  the  forests  give 
way  and  the  slopes  lead  down  to  the  innumer- 
able coves  and  beaches  of  the  Buzzards  Bay 
shore.  Woods  Hole  is  at  the  southern  end  and 
Falmouth  on  its  lovely  plain  lies  at  the  eastern 
base  of  this  imposing  moraine. 

Eastward  from  the   Canal  the  hills  run 


38  Cape  Cod 

through  the  northern  parts  of  Sandwich,  Barn- 
stable, Yarmouth,  Dennis  and  Brewster,  into 
Orleans,  or  rather  across  Orleans  to  the  open 
sea.  This  range  of  uneven  upland  lies  near 
the  Bay  shore,  leaving  room  for  a  string  of 
villages  and  for  farm  lands  of  modest  extent, 
for  the  north-shore  state  road,  and  for  the 
railway  as  far  east  as  Yarmouth.  Yet  all  this 
needs  to  be  put  a  little  differently,  for  most  of 
road  and  railway  is  to  be  found  among  the 
northern  foothills  or  near  the  northern  edge 
of  the  moraine,  for  moraine  it  is,  acctmiulated 
on  the  rim  of  a  wide  lobe  of  ice  that  lay  where 
Cape  Cod  Bay  and  Massachusetts  Bay  now 
are.  At  many  points  the  moraine  stops  where 
the  tide  marshes  begin  and  the  traveler,  eager 
for  every  glimpse  of  the  blue  waters  is  tanta- 
lized by  finding  himself  lost  among  scrubby 
forests. 

Hills  and  mountains  are  low  or  high  accord- 
ing to  their  surroundings.  Hence  Bourne 
Hill  in  Sandwich,  rising  nearly  three  hundred 
feet  above  the  sea,  is  the  monarch  of  the  Cape. 
Then  there  is  Shoot  Flying  Hill  in  Barnstable, 
said  to  have  its  name  from  being  a  good  place 
to  shoot  wild  fowl  as  they  migrated  between 
the  Bay  and  the  Sound.  Scargo  Hill  sur- 
mounted by  a  tower  is  in  Dennis,  being  an- 
other hill  of  the  great  moraine  and  a  welcome 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  39 

beacon  to  thousands  of  sailors  bringing  their 
craft  from  distant  seas  to  the  harbors  of 
Barnstable,  Yarmouth,  Dennis  and  Brewster. 

Higher  than  any  of  these  is  the  master  ele- 
vation of  Plymouth,  Manomet  Hill,  the  cul- 
minating part  of  the  Plymouth  moraine,  the 
greatest  landmark  between  the  Blue  Hills  of 
Milton  and  the  Cape  Cod  Canal. 

If  we  follow  the  moraine  from  Falmouth 
northward  until  it  bends  eastward  in  Sand- 
wich, we  shall  find  on  the  inner  side  a  plain, 
springing  from  the  base  of  the  hills  at  about 
two  hundred  feet  above  the  sea.  This  plain 
slopes  southward  toward  Vineyard  Soimd.  As 
we  go  eastward  into  Barnstable  the  hills  are 
lower,  and  likewise  the  northern  edge  of  the 
plain,  which  is  here  about  one  hundred  feet 
in  altitude.  A  little  farther  east,  at  Yarmouth 
Camp  Grounds,  the  measure  is  only  forty  or 
fifty  feet. 

The  relation  of  moraine  and  plain  are  per- 
fectly seen  at  the  Camp  Ground.  The  cot- 
tages are  on  the  northern  border  of  the  plain, 
and  directly  northward  rise  the  hills,  which 
the  railway  and  the  highway  cross  for  a  mile 
or  more  to  Yarmouth  Station.  Three  miles 
south  are  Hyannis  and  the  head  of  Lewis  Bay. 
Everywhere  the  plain  slopes,  imperceptibly  to 
the  eye,   toward  Vineyard   and   Nantucket 


40  Cape  Cod 

Sounds.  In  the  shoreward  belt,  where  the 
plain  is  cut  by  inlets  of  the  sea,  are  Falmouth, 
Cotuit,  Centerville,  Hyannis  and  various  Yar- 
mouths,  Dennises,  Harwiches  and  Chathams, 
all  villages  of  the  south  shore. 
•  From  Falmouth  to  Chatham,  between  the 
moraine  and  the  sound,  lies  this  gently  slant- 
ing surface,  known  to  glacialists  as  an  outwash 
plain.  When  waters  flow  out  at  the  lower  end 
of  a  glacier  in  a  mountain  valley  they  spread 
their  ample  load  of  sands  and  clays  in  a  narrow 
belt  down  the  valley.  When  an  ice  sheet 
spreads  out  on  rather  even  ground,  streams 
come  out  at  many  places  from  under  its  frontal 
edge.  They  grade  up  the  ground  in  front  of 
the  glacier;  they  change  their  points  of  outflow 
and  their  courses  below  the  outflow.  They  run 
into  each  other  in  braided  and  tangled  pat- 
terns, but  all  in  all,  construct  a  sloping  plain 
of  outwash.  This  is  what  happened  on  the 
Cape,  with  ice  in  Cape  Cod  Bay  and  ice  in 
Buzzards  Bay — ice  that  reached  far  northward 
and  kept  pushing  southward,  and  the  melting 
never  ceased  while  the  ice  endured,  and  the 
morainic  hills  were  built  and  the  frontal  plain 
was  spread  and  the  upper  Cape  began  to  take 
shape ;  a  shape  which  is  little  changed,  and  its 
appearance  would  be  little  changed,  if  the 
mantle  of  herb  and  forest  were  stripped  away. 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  41 

Within  the  outwash  plain  are  the  basins  of 
scores  of  lakes  and  ponds  of  various  sizes  and 
shapes,  with  forested  shores,  sandy  beaches 
and  a  wealth  of  natural  beauty  which  in  later 
years  has  been  in  process  of  discovery.  In  not 
a  few  places  the  plain  is  pitted  with  dry  de- 
pressions, or  kettle  holes,  whose  origin  is  the 
same  as  that  of  the  lake  basins.  Whether  a 
lake  is  found  in  such  a  depression  depends  on 
the  supply  of  water  and  the  porosity  or  open 
texture  of  the  subsoil.  Gathering  in  a  single 
sentence  the  forms  of  the  upper  part  of  the 
Cape — it  has  a  northern  section  or  axis  of 
moraine,  and  a  wide,  sloping  plain  on  the 
south,  while  on  every  shore,  north,  south,  east 
and  west,  is  a  fringe  of  coast  marshes  and  bays 
and  tidal  runs. 

In  the  town  of  Orleans,  there  begin  as  we 
go  north,  those  rather  low  and  dreary  levels 
known  as  the  plains  of  Nauset  in  the  town  of 
Eastham.  The  traveler  by  the  railway  or  in 
his  motor  car  looks  out  upon  this  monotonous 
and  half-desert  vista  and  wonders  if  he  has 
exhausted  the  natural  scenery  of  the  Cape. 
And  his  wonder  grows  when  he  is  told  that 
Indian  corn  was  formerly  raised  there  for  out- 
side trade,  and  that  a  couple  of  decades  after 
the  landing  of  the  Mayflower  people  there  was 
a  serious  project   to   transplant  the  whole 


42  Cape  Cod 

Plymouth  colony  to  this  fiat  and  sea-girt 
ground. 

As  we  approach  Wellfleet  the  surface  rises 
and  through  Wellfleet  to  High  Head  in  Truro 
we  find  higher  and  hilly  ground,  with  more 
forests,  plentiful  lakes  and  new  surprises  at 
each  turn  of  the  ever- winding  highway.  The 
physiographer  speaks  of  these  grounds  as  high 
plains,  for  he  discovers,  at  altitudes  varying 
from  eighty  to  about  one  hundred  and  forty 
feet,  enough  harmony  in  the  upper  levels  to 
warrant  the  name  of  plains.  A  plodding  walk- 
er, however,  without  a  relief  map  or  a  wide 
view,  would  call  it  very  broken  and  hilly 
ground. 

Here  the  Cape  is  higher  in  the  south  and 
east,  or  on  the  ocean  side,  and  lower  on  the 
west  and  north,  on  the  Bay  side.  Into  the 
mass  of  loose  glacial  waste  the  Atlantic,  im- 
hindered  and  powerful,  has  cut  its  way  and  has 
fashioned  here  the  noblest  cliffs  on  the  Cape, 
cliffs  that  begin  in  Orleans,  and  run  northward 
beyond  Highland  Light  to  High  Head  in 
Truro.  Here  the  waves  of  every  winter  and 
even  the  lashings  of  summer  storms  work  on 
the  cliffs,  shift  their  materials  along  the  shore 
and  out  to  sea,  and  slowly  move  their  crest 
lines  westward. 

Running  across  the  Cape  from  east  to  west, 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  43 

m  this  region  of  high  and  broken  plains  are 
almost  a  dozen  valleys,  a  mile  or  two  apart, 
parallel  to  each  other  and  having  floors  that 
slope  toward  Cape  Cod  Bay.  One  of  the 
deepest  and  widest  of  these  is  threaded  by 
that  tidal  water  known  as  Pamet  River,  which 
heads  eastward  at  Pamet  Life  Saving  Station 
and  Ballston  Beach.  But  for  the  shoreline 
bar  at  that  point,  topped  by  dtine  sands,  the 
Pamet  channel  would  join  the  Bay  to  the  ocean 
and  set  off  all  the  northern  stretch  of  Cape  Cod 
as  an  island.  This  valley  was  the  limit  of  the 
first  excursion  of  Standish  and  his  company 
from  the  Mayflower  in  Provincetown  harbor, 
and  marks  the  first  discovery  of  a  supply  of 
com. 

Northward  from  Pamet  are  Longnook,  a 
vale  of  gentle  seclusion,  not  seen  by  the  rim- 
ning  tourist,  and  a  little  valley  that  begins  on 
the  golf  grounds  of  Highland  Light  and  comes 
out  in  the  village  of  North  Truro.  It  is  the 
*' Mosquito  Hollow"  of  the  golfer,  who  often 
has  more  to  do  than  follow  his  ball  from  the 
sixth  to  the  eighth  hole.  Southward  from 
Pamet  one  of  the  loveliest  of  these  valleys  is 
Cahoon's  Hollow  east  of  Wellfleet.  It  is  bor- 
dered by  pine  forests  and  transparent  lakes 
and  through  those  forests  and  around  those 
lakes  one  may  pass  on  hard  sand  roads,  uphill 


44  Cape  Cod 

and  downhill  in  quiet  shades,  that  seem  as 
remote  for  the  hour  as  the  forest  depths  of 
Maine  or  northern  Wisconsin.  It  is  such 
places  that  are  not  seen  from  cars  that  whirl 
over  the  tar-faced  road  at  thirty  miles  an  hour. 
The  traveler  who  has  rushed  along  the  south 
shore  road,  shot  down  the  main  artery  to 
Provincetown,  and  returned  to  Boston  by 
Brewster,  Barnstable  and  Sandwich — he  has 
done  well,  but  let  him  not  suppose  he  has  seen 
the  Cape. 

Some  old  libraries  in  New  England  can  pro- 
duce a  time-stained  and  limp  pamphlet  of 
about  a  dozen  pages,  by  a  Member  of  the 
Humane  Society.  The  title  is  '*  A  Description 
of  the  Eastern  Coast''  and  the  writer  was  the 
Reverend  James  Freeman.  Its  object  was  to 
locate  for  the  shipwrecked  sailor,  the  refuge 
huts  erected  by  the  Humane  Society,  and  in 
this  humble  booklet  is  a  careful  description  of 
this  group  of  parallel  valleys,  of  the  very  exist- 
ence of  which  modem  books  and  essays  about 
the  Cape  give  no  hint.  The  most  southerly 
channel  is  Plum  Valley  in  Eastham.  It  is  easy 
to  see  why  this  valley  is  thus  named,  and  it 
is  a  fairly  safe  guess  that  most  of  the  others 
would  reveal  the  shrubby  growths,  the  cluster- 
ing colors  and  the  wild  flavor  of  the  beach 
plimi. 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  45 

At  High  Head  in  Truro,  we  drop  down  to 
the  beaches,  marshes  and  sand  dunes  of  the 
Provincelands,  and  let  us  anticipate  our  story 
to  say  that  all  below  and  beyond  High  Head 
is  the  product  of  forces  working  after  the  ice 
of  the  glacial  period  was  gone — the  creation 
of  currents,  waves  and  winds — ten  square 
miles  of  fascinating  coimtry  that  is  new,  ac- 
cording to  the  geologist's  ways  of  counting  age. 

High  Head  is  flanked  on  either  side  by  salt 
marshes — as  they  were  in  the  old  days — fresh 
marshes  now :  for  the  long  beach  toward  Prov- 
incetown,  built  and  almost  completed  by  na- 
ture, was  finished  by  man,  shutting  out  the 
salt  water,  and  furnishing  a  level  track  for  the 
railway  and  the  highway,  both  of  which  de- 
scend from  the  glacial  highlands,  at  the  pump- 
ing station  near  the  inner  shore.  The  great 
dune  ridges  carry  the  Cape  around  to  the  west, 
and  springing  from  them  is  the  hooked  spit 
which  by  its  spiral  curve  forms  the  harbor 
of  Provincetown. 

Going  westward  across  the  Bay,  Plymouth  on 
its  harbor,  nestles  in  the  eastern  slopes  of  an- 
other great  moraine  mass,  which  rises  westward 
and  extends  southward,  inclosing  many  lakes, 
and  covered  with  woodland  almost  unbroken 
save  for  the  sad-looking  trunks  and  tops  of 
the  oaks  ravaged  by  the  gypsy  moth.     Going 


46  Cape  Cod 

southward  the  moraine  culminates  in  Mano- 
met  Hill,  394  feet,  higher  by  about  a  hundred 
feet  than  any  hill  on  the  Cape  itself.  This 
great  mass,  and  the  high  ground  reaching 
southward  through  the  town  of  Plymouth 
into  Bourne,  has  been  attacked  by  the  waves 
of  the  Bay,  and  the  results  are  seen  in  the 
boulder  pavements  of  its  beaches  and  in  the 
cliffs  that  rise  above  them. 

Edward  Hitchcock  was  the  distinguished 
President  of  Amherst  College.  He  was  also 
one  of  the  great  geologists  in  the  earlier  days 
of  that  science  and  about  seventy  years  ago 
he  put  forth  a  report  on  the  geology  of  Massa- 
chusetts, in  two  quarto  volimies.  He  did  not 
in  this  classic  doctmient  venture  much  about 
Cape  Cod,  but  he  had  an  open  and  fertile 
mind,  he  had  been  reading  Agassiz  and  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  and  had  gained  some  knowledge 
of  the  startling  glacial  theory  with  which  these 
men  had  set  Europe  thinking.  Hitchcock 
pondered  what  he  had  seen  on  the  Cape  and 
put  a  postscript  into  his  preface,  including  this 
remarkable  paragraph. 

''Is  it  possible  that  the  whole  of  Cape  Cod 
is  nothing  but  a  vast  terminal  moraine,  pro- 
duced by  a  glacier  advancing  through  Massa- 
chusetts Bay  and  scooping  out  the  materials 
that  now  form  the  Cape?    In  this  case  the 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  47 

moraines  at  Plymouth  and  Truro  would  form 
a  part  of  the  lateral  moraines,  and  probably- 
most  of  Nantucket  and  Martha's  Vineyard 
might  be  regarded  as  moraines  of  the  same 
glacier,  when  it  extended  farther  south." 

In  a  time  when  ice  sheets  were  subjects  for 
confused  wonderment,  much  ignorance  and 
some  skepticism,  this  may  almost  be  called  an 
utterance  of  genius,  for  we,  with  the  harvest 
of  a  thousand  workers  gathered  in  our  hand, 
can  ill  appreciate  the  grasp,  we  might  say,  the 
daring  of  this  great  observer.  It  is  no  special 
credit  to  the  physiographer  of  to-day  that  he 
is  able  to  go  into  further  explanation  and  to 
correct  in  some  particulars  the  interpretation 
of  Dr.  Hitchcock. 

Making  sure  of  main  facts — the  reader  prob- 
ably knows  that  one  of  the  great  centers  of 
ice  movement  in  North  America  was  in  the 
Labrador  peninsula,  east  of  Hudson  Bay. 
There  centered  an  ice  sheet  known  to  glacial 
students  as  the  Laurentian  or  Labrador  flow. 
From  that  central  region  moved  the  ice  south- 
ward and  southwestward  into  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana  and  other  States. 
Over  New  England,  the  flow,  crossing  the 
St.  Lawrence  Valley,  was  to  the  southeast, 
and  the  ice  was  thick  enough  and  powerful 
enough  to  push  diagonally  across  the  north 


48  Cape  Cod 

and  south  mountain  ranges  of  western  New 
England. 

In  southeastern  New  England  the  move- 
ment of  the  ice  was  more  nearly  south  by- 
southeast.  Thus  from  the  highlands  of  north- 
ern and  central  New  England  the  ice  pushed 
outward  into  the  edge  of  the  sea,  or  at  least 
into  regions  that  are  now  covered  by  the  waters 
of  the  ocean.  From  grounds  farther  north 
these  ice  flows  passed  over  Massachusetts, 
Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut. 

So  far  as  is  known,  the  extreme  reach  of 
the  ice  in  the  south  extended  to  Nantucket, 
Martha's  vineyard,  Block  Island  and  Long 
Island.  Terminal  moraines  have  long  been 
recognized  as  crossing  these  islands,  in  the  hills 
of  the  northern  parts  of  Nantucket  and 
Martha's  Vineyard,  and  in  a  double  series 
running  from  east  to  west  on  Long  Island. 
And  south  of  each  moraine  belt  of  hills,  the 
outwash  plains  are  as  evident  as  they  are  on 
Cape  Cod.  As  on  the  Cape,  the  surface  of  the 
moraines  shows  fragments  great  and  small,  of 
bed  rocks  whose  place  of  origin  was  dozens  or 
hundreds  of  miles  away  in  New  England  or 
in  Canada. 

When  the  ice  began  to  melt  at  its  front 
faster  than  it  advanced,  or  when  as  we  say, 
the  ice  retreated,  it  by  and  by  assumed  new 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  49 

frontal  lines.  These  new  fronts  are  likewise 
indicated  by  belts  of  moraine,  as  in  southern 
Rhode  Island,  in  the  chain  of  the  Elizabeth 
Islands,  and  in  the  great  moraine  which  skirts 
Cape  Cod  Bay  on  its  south  shore,  the  moraine 
which  runs  from  Bourne  and  Sandwich  to  the 
ocean  side  of  Orleans. 

It  is  an  open  question  still,  whether  this 
retreat  stopped  on  these  lines  of  mainland 
moraine,  or  reached  much  farther  north,  to 
be  followed  by  a  new  advance  to  the  position 
of  the  moraine  belts.  Thus  we  recognize  the 
fact  that  the  glacial  invasion  was  neither 
simple,  nor  of  short  duration,  but  was,  as  has 
been  well  shown  in  recent  years,  complicated, 
prolonged,  and  marked  by  several  great  ad- 
vances of  the  icy  mantle. 

For  the  reader  of  these  pages  another  bit  of 
explanatory  warning  may  not  be  without 
value.  When  we  speak  of  an  ice  movement 
from  a  remote  part  of  Canada,  we  do  not  mean 
that  all  the  ice  came  from  that  center  of  move- 
ment. Throughout  the  ice  period  New  Eng- 
land had  its  snowstorms  and  its  moisture- 
laden  air  and  thus  made  large  contributions 
to  the  New  England  ice  sheet.  The  central 
push  and  the  direction  of  flow  were  in  a  way 
fixed  in  this  northern  region  for  reasons  not 
altogether  simple  and  not  wholly  known.    But 


50  Cape  Cod 

the  ice  that  reached  Nantucket  or  Barnstable 
County  was  no  doubt  mainly  a  product  of 
New  England. 

We  have  referred  to  glacial  ice  as  sometimes 
moving  in  lobate  masses.  How  a  ''lobe"  of 
ice  behaves,  it  may  be  well  to  explain.  We 
may  take  the  basin  of  Lake  Michigan  as  an 
example.  Without  much  doubt,  pre-glacial 
time  saw  a  valley,  where  the  lake  now  is.  The 
ice  entered  this  valley  from  the  north,  followed 
it  southward  and  spread  out  in  it.  The  central 
flow  kept  its  way  southward,  but  the  side 
movements  turned  westward  into  Wisconsin 
and  eastward  into  Michigan.  Thus  the  lines 
of  flow  were  somewhat  on  the  pattern  of  the 
lines  of  a  feather,  or,  to  venture  a  technical 
word  which  has  the  authority  of  a  distin- 
guished scholar,  the  flow  of  a  lobe  of  ice  is 
''axi-radianf — it  flows  in  the  direction  of 
an  axis,  but  radiates  in  right  and  left  di- 
rections. 

The  ice  behaved  in  like  fashion  as  it  pushed 
from  the  St.  Lawrence  Valley,  through  the 
Champlain  and  Hudson  Valleys.  Now  apply 
the  notion  to  Cape  Cod  Bay.  The  ice  pushed 
southward  to  its  edge  in  Sandwich,  Barnstable, 
and  the  other  towns,  and  it  pushed  outward 
and  westward  in  the  Diixbury-Plymouth  re- 
gion: and  outward  and  eastward  in  the  region 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  51 

of  the  lower  cape  from  Orleans  to  High  Head 
in  Truro. 

On  the  west  of  the  ice  sheet  of  Cape  Cod 
Bay  lay  another  body  of  ice  known  as  the 
Buzzards  Bay  lobe.  Along  this  belt  of  terri- 
tory the  retreat  from  the  earlier  front  on 
Martha's  Vineyard  is  marked  by  the  Elizabeth 
Islands,  which  constitute  a  moraine  parallel 
to  much  of  the  morainic  belt  on  Martha's 
Vineyard.  At  that  stage  the  ice  moving  from 
far  northward  still  held  possession  of  the  sur- 
face now  covered  by  the  waters  of  Buzzards 
Bay. 

Now  we  have  two  great  fanlike  bodies  of 
ice  lying  against  each  other,  along  the  north 
and  south  line  of  the  Plymouth  Hills.  These 
hills  form  a  moraine  between  the  two  lobes 
and  are  therefore  an  jnterlobate  moraine,  a 
form  of  which  the  glacial-hill  belts  of  our 
North  Central  States  offer  many  examples. 
The  irregular  heaps  of  material  that  lie  behind 
Plymouth  and  south  of  it,  received  contribu- 
tions from  the  pushing  ice  and  outflowing 
waters  from  east  and  west .  Late  in  the  history 
of  such  ice  lobes  the  ice  ceases  to  move,  or  is 
stagnant,  its  edges  are  often  covered  with  rock 
waste,  and  when  finally  the  ice  melts  out,  the 
waste  sinks  and  slides  to  stable  positions ,  and  the 
tumbled  hills  of  the  Plymouth  type  are  evolved. 


52  Cape  Cod 

May  we  now  go  back  to  the  retreat  of  the 
glacier  from  Nantucket  to  the  inner  curve  of 
the  Cape  and  see  other  changes  that  hap- 
pened? Much  of  the  older  ice  that  lay  on 
what  is  now  the  upper,  wide  section  of  the 
Cape,  became  stagnant  and  large  blocks  were 
covered  by  earthy  waste  brought  by  outflow- 
ing streams  from  the  still  existing  Cape  Cod 
Bay  glacier.  Precisely  this  condition  may  be 
followed  for  many  miles  on  the  front  part  of 
the  Malaspina  Glacier  in  Alaska  at  the  present 
time.  Even  forests  there  grow  on  glacial  waste 
which  in  turn  is  supported  by  ice.  So,  on  the 
Cape,  these  dead  and  buried  blocks  of  ice  in 
time  melted  beneath  their  cover,  let  down  the 
covering  materials  and  formed  the  pockets  or 
kettle  holes  in  which  nestle  the  innumerable 
lakes  which  dot  everywhere  the  upper  Cape. 

Now  we  have  brought  to  a  degree  of  com- 
pleteness the  story  of  the  great  plain  of  the 
southern  part  of  the  Cape,  with  its  forests,  its 
fields  of  scrub,  and  its  isolated  clearings  and 
hamlets.  It  was  built  by  many  changing 
streams  flowing  from  the  glacier  of  the  Bay, 
and  later  was  pitted  by  ice-block  holes.  The 
ground  water  filtered  in  and  barring  some  re- 
cent changes  of  a  minor  character,  the  topog- 
raphy was  complete,  and  we  behold  the  mar- 
velous beauty   of   Mashpee,  Santuit,  Spec- 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  53 

tacle,  Triangle  and  Lawrence,  Cotuit,  We- 
quaket,  the  various  "Long"  ponds,  and  of 
scores  of  others  great  and  small,  with  their 
blue  waters,  sandy  shores  and  frames  of  leafy 
green. 

Some  streams  of  glacial  waters,  flowing 
down  the  outwash  plain,  excavated  shallow 
and  flat-floored  channels  along  their  lower 
courses.  This  is  notably  true  in  the  southern 
part  of  the  town  of  Falmouth,  as  it  is  on  the 
southern  plains  of  Martha's  Vineyard  and 
Nantucket.  The  upper  reaches  of  these  chan- 
nels are  in  some  cases  followed  now  by  the 
outlets  of  lakes,  Mashpee  River  being  an  exam- 
ple. In  other  cases  these  valleys  are  dry  or 
merely  swampy,  the  flat  floors  being  bordered 
by  steep  sides.  Into  the  southern  parts  of  the 
channels,  sea  water  has  entered,  making  them 
into  marine  bays.  In  a  number  of  instances 
on  the  Cape  and  on  the  islands  these  bays  have 
been  turned  into  fresh  lakes  by  the  building  of 
shore  bars  across  their  openings.' 

^  Note.  At  least  seven  of  these  valleys  ending  in  bays  may 
be  counted  from  Falmouth  Harbor  to  Menauhant  or  a  little 
beyond.  They  are,  from  west  to  east,  (i)  Bowman's  Pond,  now 
Falmouth  Harbor,  leading  north  by  several  small  ponds  to  Long 
Pond,  which  is  deeply  recessed,  into  the  Falmouth  Moraine;  (2) 
Little  Pond,  with  a  dry  valley  extending  about  three  miles  north- 
ward; (3)  Great  Pond,  which  is  tidal  about  four  miles  and  may 
be  traced  to  three  miles  north  of  Hatchville,  or  nine  miles  from 
Vineyard  Sound;  (4)  Green  Pond,  with  water,  tidal  marsh,  and 


54  Cape  Cod 

There  is  a  considerable  amount  of  evidence 
that  points  to  the  existence  of  a  vast  glacier 
lying  east  of  the  Cape.  If  any  reader  is  given 
to  the  idea  that  geologists  deal  much  in  theory 
he  is  likely  to  be  startled  by  a  proposal  to 
invade  with  ice  the  Atlantic  domain  for  a  hun- 
dred miles  and  more  beyond  a  strip  of  remote 
foreland  that  is  already  embosomed  by  the  sea. 
But  here  are  the  facts  with  which  we  have  to 
deal.  We  know  that  the  continental  glacier 
scored  heavily  the  shore  parts  of  Maine  and 
moved  out  for  an  unknown  distance  where  now 
is  sea.  Mount  Desert  is  fifteen  hundred  feet 
high,  stands  on  the  sea  border  and  was  freely 
overridden  by  ice .  This  means  a  large  invasion 
of  the  present  sea  territory  on  the  south.  We 
know  also  that  the  land  was  higher  than  now, 
causing  wide  recession  of  the  sea  to  the  south- 
ward. 

These  facts  open  possibilities.  Over  to  the 
southeast  of  the  Cape  are  those  threatening 
and  dangerous  Nantucket  shoals,  which  turned 
back  the  Mayflower,  and   have  for  centuries 

dry  valley  extending  in  all  six  miles;  (5)  Bowers  Pond,  with  a 
dry  valley  heading  over  six  miles  from  the  sea;  (6)  A  double- 
headed  channel  running  north  from  Menauhant,  the  eastern  arm 
of  the  bay  heading  at  Waquoit,  then  up  Child's  River  to  John 
Pond,  seven  miles  from  the  sea.  These  flat-floored  valleys  are 
in  a  number  of  places  strikingly  adapted  to  cranberry  culture, 
having  a  natural  grade  and  being  readily  flooded. 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  55 

put  the  shipmaster  on  his  mettle,  if  they  did 
not  lure  him  to  his  grave.  Farther  east,  from 
a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  forty  miles  dis- 
tant, are  other  reefs  and  shallow  waters,  of 
what  is  known  as  St.  George's  Shoals.  There 
is  a  story  of  a  ship's  crew  playing  baseball  on 
a  shoal  bared  at  low  tide.  True  or  false,  the 
yam  serves  to  fix  in  the  memory  this  feature 
of  our  Atlantic  waters.  The  Nantucket  and 
St.  George's  Shoals  appear  much  like  sub- 
merged terminal  moraines. 

Let  the  reader  now  recall  those  east  by 
west  channels  in  Wellfieet  and  Truro,  to  which 
we  have  perhaps  seemed  to  give  needless  em- 
phasis. Their  floors  descend  from  east  to  west. 
They  were  made  by  streams  of  water.  Those 
streams  must  have  flowed  from  east  to  west. 
They  could  not  have  had  their  sources  in  the 
ocean.    Whence  did  they  come? 

Put  all  our  facts  together;  or  rather — set  up 
a  hypothesis  and  see  if  it  fits  the  facts.  Pro- 
ject a  vast  ice  sheet  over  Maine,  through  the 
Gulf  of  Maine  from  Massachusetts  to  Nova 
Scotia,  and  southward.  We  know  the  glacier 
moved  far  south  from  the  Maine  shoreline  of 
to-day.  We  know  wide  sea  bottoms  were  then 
above  sea-level.  We  know  that  St.  George's 
and  Nantucket  Shoals  may  well  stand  as  the 
terminal  accimiulations  of  such  an  ice  sheet. 


56  Cape  Cod 

And  we  know  that  the  waters  from  that  sheet 
as  it  melted  would  flow  out  on  the  west,  in  a 
manner  suited  to  the  making  of  the  cross 
channels  on  the  lower  Cape.  Perhaps  we  have 
gone  too  far  in  uncovering  the  method,  being 
reluctant  simply  to  assert,  what  on  its  face, 
unexplained,  might  seem  an  extravagant  guess. 
But  it  is  more  than  guess,  it  is  a  fairly  fortified 
conclusion;  and  if  true  it  means  that  the  lower 
Cape,  from  Orleans  or  Chatham  to  Truro  is 
an  interlobate  moraine  between  the  ''South 
Channel"  glacier  and  the  Cape  Cod  Bay  gla- 
cier as  the  Plymouth  belt  of  hills  is  interlobate 
between  the  glaciers  of  Cape  Cod  and  Buz- 
zards Bays. 

It  is  believed  that  the  smaller  lobate  ice 
sheets  on  the  west  were  the  first  to  melt  away. 
As  the  retirement  of  the  Buzzards  Bay  gla- 
cier left  that  region  open,  the  waters  from  the 
waning  Cape  Cod  Bay  glacier  spilled  across 
the  base  ot  the  Cape  and  excavated  that 
natural  valley  which  is  now  followed  by  the 
Canal.  Later,  as  the  ice  in  Cape  Cod  Bay 
waned,  the  waters  from  the  South  Channel 
glacier  swept  across  the  lower  Cape,  dug  the 
valleys  already  described,  and  shaped  the 
broad  plains  of  Nauset  with  their  wandering 
outflows. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  we  have  kept  in 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  57 

the  background  the  fact  that  the  glacial  his- 
tory of  the  Cape  is  not  so  simple  as  it  might 
appear.  We  have  been  dealing  with  what  is 
known  to  glacialists  as  the  Wisconsin  invasion, 
which  was  the  latest  of  several  great  episodes 
of  the  glacial  period  taken  as  a  whole.  With 
greater  or  less  depth  these  later  deposits  cover 
most  of  the  Cape,  but  below  these  more  recent 
accimiulations,  are  exposed  older  beds  of  clay, 
sand  and  gravel,  belonging  to  earlier  invasions 
or  to  interglacial  intervals. 

These  older  deposits  are  revealed  by  borings, 
as  for  wells;  in  some  of  the  shore  cliffs,  and  in 
clay  pits,  such  as  are  found  at  the  brick  yards 
of  West  Barnstable.  Many  visitors  have  seen 
these  older  deposits  in  the  splendid  cliffs  at 
Highland  Light.  Most  conspicuous  are  the 
massive  and  tough  clays,  known  there  as  the 
Clay  Pounds,  as  they  stand  carved  by  wave 
and  rain  wash  into  the  spurs  and  gullies  which 
give  to  the  great  amphitheater  there  such  an 
aspect  of  wild  nature.  Below  these  clays  and 
above  the  recent  sands  of  the  beach,  the  ob- 
servant visitor  will  see  basal  spurs  of  coarse 
gravel,  so  old  that  the  pebbles  are  cemented 
into  a  conglomerate  and  rusted  with  the  leach- 
ing and  oxidation  to  which  the  materials  have 
long  been  subject.  It  may  be  well  believed, 
indeed,  that  the  time  that  passed  between  the 


58  Cape  Cod 

deposit  of  these  gravels,  and  the  making  of  the 
later  moraines  of  the  Cape,  was  many  times 
longer  than  the  span  that  brings  us  from  the 
later  ice  to  the  present  time. 

Few  results  of  the  glacial  invasion,  first  and 
last,  have  raised  so  many  queries  as  the  erratic 
masses  of  rock  that  are  found  far  from  their 
parent  beds.  Such  drift  boulders  are  conspicu- 
ous on  many  parts  of  the  Cape,  especially  on 
the  heights  and  slopes  of  the  morainic  ridges. 
They  are  common  on  the  great  hill  belt  from 
Falmouth  to  Sandwich  and  from  Sandwich  to 
Orleans,  and  on  the  inner  or  northern  slopes  of 
the  latter  section.  This  is  what  the  glacialist 
calls  the  ice-contact,  that  is  the  slope  that 
faced  the  ice  as  it  melted  away  in  retreat. 

''Bear-den'*  patches  of  great  boulders  occur 
in  the  hill  forests  of  the  Beebe  estate  west  of 
Falmouth  village  and  such  a  bunching  of 
boulders  in  Pocasset  is  locally  known  as  the 
Devil's  Den.  Enos  rock  on  the  Nauset  mo- 
raine in  Eastham  is  thirty-four  feet  long.  A 
boulder  ten  or  twelve  feet  long  lies  by  the 
roadside  on  the  right  as  one  approaches  High- 
land Light  and  from  it  the  adjacent  hotel  cot- 
tage is  called  ''The  Rock.'*  From  these  sup- 
plies of  the  coarser  drift  must  have  been  taken 
the  granite  "for  exportation''  as  described  by 
the  annalist  of  Falmouth.    Myriads  of  smaller 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  59 

pieces  lie  in  the  gravels  everywhere,  migrants 
from  the  region  of  the  Merrimac,  from  all 
northern  New  England,  and  from  the  founda- 
tions of  eastern  Canada. 

The  shortest  journey  on  the  Cape  flashes  on 
the  eye  a  vision  of  blue  waters  framed  in 
forest  green.  Back  from  the  ocean,  nothing 
else  is  so  characteristic  of  the  Cape  as  its  lakes, 
and  this  is  equally  true  of  all  of  the  Old  Colony 
which  lies  in  Plymouth  County.  Someone 
has  said  that  one  could,  in  the  town  of  Plym- 
outh, camp  by  a  different  lake  every  night 
in  the  year.  This  can  hardly  be  true,  but  if 
county  instead  of  town  were  named,  it  could 
probably  be  done.  The  topographic  map, 
drawn  with  contours  for  altitude  and  showing 
the  coimtry  on  a  scale  of  one  inch  to  the  mile, 
records  one  hundred  and  twenty-three  lakes 
in  the  town  of  Plymouth  and  it  is  quite  certain 
that  the  topographer  missed  some  of  the 
smaller  ponds,  hidden  as  they  commonly  are, 
by  a  complete  encirclement  of  forest. 

On  the  Cape,  the  same  maps  show  two 
hundred  and  seventy  natural  lakes  and  ponds. 
They  have  the  greatest  variety  in  size,  shape, 
depth,  in  their  shore  forms,  the  vegetation  of 
their  borders  and  the  life  of  their  waters. 
One  of  the  largest  is  Long  Pond  in  Harwich, 
with  a  maximum  depth  of  66  feet  and  an  area 


6o  Cape  Cod 

of  more  than  a  square  mile.  There  is  no  place 
on  Cape  Cod,  perhaps,  which  rivals  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  Pleasant  Lake  railway  station 
in  revealing  the  abundance  and  beauty  of 
these  unsalted  waters.  Let  the  traveler  as  he 
goes  north  from  Harwich  station  watch  for  the 
place  where  he  gets  the  vistas,  losing  them  all 
too  soon,  of  Long  Pond  on  the  right  and 
Hinkleys  and  Seymour  Ponds  on  the  left,  com- 
pensating him  in  a  measure  for  those  longer 
stretches  of  railway  travel  in  which  he  is  hid- 
den among  morainic  hills,  while  he  looks  in 
vain  for  the  sea.  Indeed  we  have  thought  of 
the  Cape  as  so  narrow  and  wave-beaten, 
that  coming  for  the  first  time  into  it,  we 
are  astonished  to  find  that  it  has  an  interior 
and  forest  spaces  that  seem  as  interminable 
as  one  might  find  in  any  other  part  of  New 
England. 

Another  of  the  greater  fresh-waters  of  the 
Cape  is  Great  Pond  in  the  town  of  Barnstable. 
To  add  to  its  attraction,  this  name  has  been 
superseded  by  Wequaket,  which  has  a  family 
resemblance  to  many  other  Indian  names  on 
the  Cape.  Whether  a  lobster  dinner  is  more 
to  be  enjoyed  on  the  shore  because  of  the  new 
name,  we  do  not  know.  The  lake  lies  in  the 
northern  edge  of  the  outwash  plain  and  from 
its  northern  shore  rise  the  hills  of  the  great 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape         6i 

moraine  where  on  the  north  are  the  Great 
Marshes  of  Barnstable. 

There  is  no  lake,  larger  or  smaller,  which  is 
more  beautiful  than  Mashpee.  It  is  deeply 
set  in  the  outwash  plain  and  fine  forests  rise 
on  its  borders,  save  where  in  two  or  three 
places  a  farmer  in  early  days  has  cleared  the 
slopes  for  meadow,  or  found  a  low  pocket  for 
a  cranberry  bog.  The  old  Indian  town  never 
had  many  people  and  has  but  about  three 
himdred  now,  and  this  sparseness  of  the  de- 
structive human  animal  may  explain  the 
seclusion  which  the  lake  has  preserved.  Into 
the  lake  from  the  east  runs  a  wooded  promon- 
tory which  almost  cuts  it  into  two  waters,  and 
indeed  the  northern  part  is  known  as  Wakeby 
Lake.  This  promontory  is  said  to  belong  to 
the  President  of  Harvard  College  and  there 
could  be  no  lovelier  mingling  of  water  and 
forest. 

Where  the  highway  crosses  the  outlet 
stream,  an  eighth  of  a  mile  below  the  lake,  is 
the  Hotel  Attaquin,  a  plain  two-story  road 
house,  where  Grover  Cleveland,  Joseph  Jeffer- 
son, and  Daniel  Webster  in  his  time,  found 
wholesome  food,  and  a  decent  bed,  and  much 
good  converse,  when  they  were  tempting  the 
bass  of  the  lake  and  the  trout  of  the  neighbor- 
ing brooks. 


62  Cape  Cod 

Most  of  the  Cape  lakes  are  shallow,  for  the 
depths  already  recorded  are  slight  for  waters 
that  are  so  large.  The  smaller  Cliff  Pond  in 
East  Brewster  shows  a  depth  of  eighty-one 
feet.  The  cliffs  for  which  it  is  named  rise  more 
than  one  htmdred  feet  from  some  of  its  shores, 
and  thus  show  that  the  ice-block  kettle  is  at 
least  two  hundred  feet  deep,  from  the  bottom 
of  the  water  to  the  top  of  the  adjoining  upland. 

In  much  the  greater  number,  the  lakes  are 
of  glacial  origin.  Some  low  areas  that  held 
lakes  at  the  close  of  the  glacial  time  now  show 
only  bogs,  because  wash  from  the  surrounding 
lands  and  the  accimiulations  of  aquatic  vege- 
tation have  filled  the  shallow  basins  of  the  old 
time.  In  other  cases,  the  bays  of  the  larger 
lakes  have  been  made  into  separate  ponds  by 
the  growth  of  barrier  beaches,  obstructing 
shallow  passages  at  the  mouth  of  small  arms 
of  the  lakes. 

A  few  lakes,  particularly  back  of  Province- 
town,  lie  among  the  sand  dimes,  and  their 
shallow  basins  result  from  the  accumulation 
of  sand  hills  around  small  areas  which  escape 
the  sand  deluge.  Perhaps  two  or  threte  dozen 
ponds  can  be  found  on  the  shores  of  the  Cape 
which  were  formerly  arms  of  the  sea.  They 
have  been  isolated  from  the  salt  water  by  the 
growth  of  spits  and  barrier  beaches.   They  are 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  63 

then  replenished  year  by  year  by  fresh  water 
f alhng  on  their  surfaces  and  leaching  into  them 
from  the  adjoining  lands,  while  the  original 
salts  are  lost  to  them  by  equally  gradual 
movements  of  the  ground  waters.  Oyster 
Pond,  by  whose  shores  the  first  settlers  came 
to  Falmouth,  is  such  a  lake,  and  several  bays 
of  the  sea  border  of  Falmouth  have  had  a  like 
history.  Such  changes  go  on  from  year  to 
year,  and  any  season  may  show  another  bay 
shut  off  as  a  pond,  or  unstable  conditions  of 
alternation  may  prevail  until  the  cutting  oflE 
is  complete. 

The  old  East  Harbor  in  Truro,  near  Prov- 
incetown,  had  still  withstood  the  closing  pro- 
cess of  nature  when  in  the  last  century  man 
completed  the  barrier  which  nature  had  far 
advanced  in  construction,  and  thus  freshened 
this  shallow  water  which  everyone  sees  on  his 
right,  as  he  approaches  the  dunes  at  the  door 
of  Provincetown.  At  the  southern  end  of 
Monomoy  is  Powder  Hole,  once  a  harbor  fre- 
quented by  ships,  now  landlocked  and  wel- 
coming the  travelers  of  the  sea  no  more. 

Quite  by  contraries,  a  few  marine  bays  on 
the  Cape  shore  were  once  occupied  by  fresh 
waters.  These  waters  lay  in  morainic  kettles, 
with  a  slight  and  frail  barrier  of  drift  separat- 
ing them  from  the  sea.    The  waves  have  re- 


64  Cape  Cod 

moved  the  barrier  and  let  in  the  ocean.  No 
better  example  can  be  found  than  the  lovely 
Quisset  Harbor  on  the  Buzzards  Bay  shore  of 
Falmouth.  Stage  Harbor  and  Oyster  Pond 
in  Chatham,  and  Lewis  Bay  by  Hyannis  are 
doubtless  in  ice-block  holes,  but  may  never 
have  been  landlocked. 

The  beauty  of  the  lakes  can  never  be  greater 
than  in  the  past  days  of  wild  seclusion,  but 
their  usefulness  is  likely  to  grow,  as  the  Cape 
fills  and  the  summer  person  goes  afield  for  a 
refuge.  They  will  be  increasingly  useful  as 
sources  of  pure  water,  or  of  ice  when  the  win- 
ters are  cold  enough  to  form  it,  and  as  reser- 
voirs for  power,  in  the  few  cases  where  suffi- 
cient altitude  and  the  presence  of  an  outlet 
stream  make  this  use  possible.  In  not  a  few 
places,  the  lake  waters  are  pumped  to  flood 
the  cranberry  bogs  whose  grades  are  higher 
than  those  of  the  lakes. 

The  irregularities  of  glacial  deposition  have 
not  only  produced  lake  basins,  but  have  so 
impeded  drainage  as  to  bring  many  fresh- water 
marshes  into  being.  Hence  the  Old  Colony 
country  abounds  in  boggy  areas,  with  their 
peculiar  groupings  of  vegetation,  and  their 
changing  conditions.  Such  marshes  abound  in 
the  southern  parts  of  Dennis  and  Harwich — 
indeed,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Cape,  the 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  65 

extent  of  cranberry  culture  is  a  clear  index  of 
the  frequency  of  these  undrained  areas.  The 
physical  history  has  been  favorable  to  the 
existence  of  swamps,  and  the  swamps  have 
invited  the  growing  of  a  certain  fruit — such 
is  the  chain  of  physical  change  and  of  human 
activity. 

Peat  has  formed  in  a  large  number  of  the 
fresh- water  marshes,  and  at  the  time  of  the 
first  geological  survey  of  Massachusetts,  about 
seventy  years  ago,  peat  was  dug  in  most  of  the 
Cape  towns  eastward  and  northward  from 
Brewster.  That  the  lower  Cape  with  its 
scrubby  and  scanty  forest  growth  would  wel- 
come a  reserve  of  native  fuel  is  not  open  to 
doubt,  but  it  seems  equally  clear  that  for  the 
present  at  least,  the  cost  of  utilizing  the  peat 
of  the  bogs  is  prohibitive. 

Rivers  are  not  a  very  significant  part  of 
nature's  machinery  in  the  Old  Colony. 
Around  the  circuit  of  the  Bay,  from  Duxbury 
to  Provincetown,  the  streams  are  small  and 
few  in  nimiber,  even  though  they  have  been 
given  so  far  as  name  goes,  the  status  of  rivers, 
presumably  by  early  settlers  who  got  their 
notion  of  the  size  of  a  river  from  the  coimtry 
of  their  birth.  But  even  with  them  usage  was 
not  uniform,  for  the  outlet  of  Billington  Sea, 
though  but  a  couple  of  miles  long,  is  a  respect- 


66  Cape  Cod 

able  stream,  but  they  called  this  "very  sweet 
water**  Town  Brook,  and  Town  Brook  it  is  to 
this  day.  However,  there  was  loyalty  to 
England's  standards  in  naming  Eel  River, 
which  drains  Great  South  Pond  and  has  for 
these  parts  the  unusual  length  of  five  miles. 
Monumet  River  drains  Great  Herring  Pond 
in  the  south  of  Plymouth  Town  into  the  Canal 
at  Bournedale,  formerly  into  Buzzards  Bay. 

On  the  Cape  the  main  streams  are  the  outlets 
of  lakes  in  the  outwash  plain.  In  this  group 
is  the  stream  coming  from  Connemesset  Pond 
in  Falmouth,  Mashpee  River  from  Lake  Mash- 
pee,  Cotuit  River  carrying  the  overflow  of 
Santuit  Lake,  and  the  outlet  of  several  ponds 
whose  waters  turned  the  ancient  wheels  of 
Marston  Mills.  A  little  flow  of  fresh  water 
passes  through  Sandwich  northward.  It  hard- 
ly has  a  length  that  can  be  measured,  but  it  is 
perennial,  its  waters  form  a  mill  pond  which 
no  longer  supplies  a  gristmill  but  is  as  lovely 
as  any  natural  lake,  laving  the  edges  of  sum- 
mer plantations  and  half  surrounding  the 
green  promontory  where  sleep  the  fathers  of 
Cape  Cod's  oldest  town.  And  it  has  its  fish 
weir,  for  on  the  Cape  the  herring  must  never 
be  forgotten.  The  streams  of  the  outer  Cape 
are  hardly  more  than  tidal  runs,  such  as  Pamet 
River  at  Trtiro,  Herring  River  at  Wellfleet  and 


The  Origin  of  the  Cape  67 

Boat  Meadow  Creek  of  Eastham  and  Orleans. 
As  for  the  open  Atlantic  on  the  east  side  of  the 
Cape,  not  a  single  fresh- water  stream  enters 
it,  at  least  not  one  big  enough  to  put  on  a  map. 
Few  of  the  lakes  have  surface  outlets,  for 
everywhere  the  porous  subsoil  allows  a  creep- 
ing movement  of  ground  water  that  takes  the 
place  of  the  surface  streams  in  a  region  of 
less  porous  foundations. 

Since  surface  streams  are  the  main  instru- 
ments by  which  nature  sculptures  her  land 
surfaces,  and  streams  play  but  a  small  part  in 
the  Old  Colony,  we  may  safely  conclude  that 
the  land  forms  have  not  much  changed  since 
the  glacial  time,  save  where  the  sea  has 
wrought  and  where  the  winds  have  served  in 
a  large  way  as  carriers.  This  means  that  the 
country  back  from  the  shores  is  almost  as  it 
was,  but  we  shall  soon  pass  on  to  see  how 
revolutionary  have  been  the  changes  that  have 
molded  and  re-fashioned  the  shorelines  of 
the  bays,  the  sounds  and  the  open  sea. 

Note.  Maps  of  the  Old  Colony  Region,  In  addition  to  the 
ordinary  small-scale  maps  found  in  atlases,  and  advertising  cir- 
culars, the  reader  who  desires  more  than  a  cursory  acquaintance 
may  consult  to  great  advantage,  large-scale  government  maps. 
Primary  in  importance  are  the  topographic  sheets  of  the  United 
States  Geological  Survey,  which  have  a  scale  of  one  inch  to  the 
mile,  the  single  sheet  representing  a  quarter  of  a  degree  of  latitude 
and  a  quarter  of  a  degree  of  longitude.  Each  sheet  therefore  shows 
a  territory  extending  about  eighteen  miles  from  north  to  south 


68  Cape  Cod 

and  about  thirteen  miles  from  east  to  west.  The  relief  is  shown 
by  brown  contour  lines  having  a  twenty-foot  interval.  The 
sheets  covering  the  areas  described  in  this  volume  are: — Duxbury, 
Plymouth,  Falmouth,  Barnstable,  Chatham,  Wellfleet  and  Prov- 
incetown.  They  may  be  obtained  by  sending  ten  cents  each, 
by  Post  OfHce  order  only,  to  the  Director  of  the  United  States 
Geological  Survey,  Washington,  D.  C.  They  do  not  take  the 
place  of  automobile  maps  for  they  do  not  give  the  character  of 
the  roads. 

The  shores  and  soundings  of  adjoining  waters  are  shown  in 
various  maps  published  by  the  United  States  Coast  Survey, 
(Washington).  These  are  as  follows:  Cape  Cod  Bay,  No.  1208; 
Buzzards  Bay,  No.  249;  Hyannis  Harbor,  No.  247;  Eastern  En- 
trance to  Nantucket  Sound,  No.  250;  Provincetown  Harbor,  No. 
341;  Wellfleet  Harbcwr,  No.  340;  Barnstable  Harbor,  No.  339; 
Cape  Sable  to  Cape  Hatteras,  No.  1000.  The  last  shows  the 
location  of  South  Channel  and  St.  George's  Bank. 

Note.  The  geological  reader  will  welcome  a  brief  view  of 
Professor  Woodworth's  connotation,  giving  his  generahzed  sec- 
tion of  Cape  deposits,  from  younger  to  older. 

1.  Post  glacial;  Beaches,  blown  sands,  marsh  deposits,  lake 
silts,  etc. 

2.  Wisconsin  Epoch;  Falmouth  (Cape  Cod)  frontal  moraine 
and  outwash  plain.  Nantucket  intraglacial  deposits,  including 
plains  of  gravel,  till  and  kames,  ice-block  holes  on  south  side  of 
Cape  Cod. 

3.  Vineyard  Interval  (Interglacial  Epoch). 

4.  Manhasset  Group. 

Pebbly  till  at  Nauset  Head. 

Jacob  sands,  above  blue  clay  at  Highland  Light. 

5.  Gardiner  Clay.    At  Highland  Light  (Clay  Pounds.) 
Appears  also  on  the  Bay  side  of  Truro,  on  the  shores  of  Pleas- 
ant Bay  in  Chatham,  and  in  Sandwich  and  eastward  to  West 
Barnstable. 

6.  Jameco  gravel  at  Highland  Light  under  the  Gardiner 
Clay. 

7.  Sankaty  fossiliferous  moraine  sands  in  deep  well  near 
Provincetown,  and  reported  in  well  at  Orleans. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  CHANGING  SHORELINE 

The  Pilgrim  country  is  all  built  of  frail  and 
destructible  materials,  while  the  sea  is  power- 
ful and  always  at  work.  By  knowing  what  the 
sea  is  in  the  habit  of  doing  and  by  seeing 
sample  pieces  of  its  work  going  on  under  our 
eyes,  we  can  look  at  a  stretch  of  shore  and  de- 
termine rather  closely  what  it  once  was  and 
what  it  will  be  by  and  by.  And  we  have  a 
time  measure  of  three  hundred  years  on  this 
shore,  during  which  the  white  man  has  been 
looking  at  the  Cape,  making  his  marks  upon 
it  and  writing  about  it. 

Eastern  Massachusetts,  indeed  eastern 
North  America,  was  higher  during  most  of  the 
glacial  invasion  than  it  is  at  the  present  time 
and  consequently  the  shoreline  was  farther 
out  than  now.  On  this  broader  land,  north 
and  eastward  from  the  City  of  New  York,  the 
lobes  of  the  glacier  spread  out  and  sent  their 
waters  in  many  channels  across  the  outwash 
plains.     This  land  with  all  its  roughness  of 

69 


70  Cape  Cod 

rocky  hills  and  tiimbling  glacial  forms  has 
gone  down  into  the  water  enough  to  flood  the 
outlying  parts  of  the  ancient  coastlands. 

Into  the  outwash  channels  the  salt  water 
intruded  and  thus  long,  narrow  bays  like  those 
on  the  south  of  Falmouth  came  into  existence. 
Among  the  hollows  of  the  moraines,  the  sea 
water  found  its  way,  and  thus  turned  many 
hills  into  islands,  and  many  ridges  into  penin- 
sulas flanked  by  straggling  bays.  Thus  are 
to  be  explained  the  present  ragged  shores  of 
Buzzards    Bay. 

In  exactly  the  same  fashion  the  eastern 
shore  of  the  Cape  was  irregular  and  broken. 
It  lay  out  some  miles  farther  east  than  the 
present  line  of  cliffs,  and  has  been  trimmed 
back  to  its  present  position  by  the  strong 
waves  of  the  open  ocean.  The  waste  thus 
sliced  off  from  the  Cape  has  been  carried  to 
other  situations  and  built  into  a  variety  of 
shore  structures  which  had  no  existence  at  the 
close  of  the  glacial  invasion  and  are  now 
changing  so  rapidly  that  the  United  States 
Coast  Survey  must  revise  its  maps  at  intervals 
of  a  few  years  if  they  are  to  be  trustworthy 
guides  of  the  mariner. 

On  the  frail  and  exposed  headlands  of  the 
Atlantic  side  of  the  Cape,  the  waves  wrought 
day  and  night,  year  by  year,  and  century  after 


The  Changing  Shoreline         71 

century.  Then  as  now,  the  progress  was  not 
always  the  same.  Along  most  of  the  shoreline 
the  summer  waves  do  not  reach  the  base  of 
the  cliffs.  But  even  in  midsummer  a  powerful 
storm  may  send  the  waves  at  high  tide  plung- 
ing upon  the  foot  of  the  scarp,  and  the  sands 
go  crumbling  into  the  surf.  The  slopes  are 
steepened  so  that  the  angle  of  repose  is  de- 
stroyed and  thousands  of  tons  of  the  Cape's 
substance  slide  down  on  the  beach  to  be  quick- 
ly washed  away.  Waters  and  the  coarser 
sands  and  gravels  are  swept  along  the  strand. 
The  waves  are  not  alone  in  the  work.  The 
wash  of  every  rainstorm  helps  and  the  winds 
do  their  part,  catching  up  the  dry  sands, 
sweeping  them  along  the  cliffs,  or  even  over 
their  crests  and  back  for  some  distance  on  the 
upland.  Recession  is  going  on  and  the  Cape 
is  becoming  narrower,  even  though  at  a  given 
point  little  change  is  seen  from  year  to  year. 
If  the  cliffs,  especially  those  cut  in  loose  ma- 
terial, were  not  undercut  by  the  waves,  they 
would  become  ''mature,"  that  is,  they  would 
assimie  less  abrupt  slopes,  and  would  in  time 
be  covered  by  beach  grass  and  other  plants. 
These  cliffs,  however,  for  all  the  miles  from 
Nauset  Harbor  to  High  Head,  are  steep,  and 
as  bare  of  greenery,  as  the  ever-shifting  sands 
of  the  beach  below  them. 


72  Cape  Cod 

No  question  is  asked  more  often  than  this — 
how  fast  is  the  chff  being  cut  back,  and,  how 
long  a  time  will  pass  before  the  whole  outer 
Cape  is  consimied?  Mr.  Isaac  Morton  Small 
lives  in  a  house  perched  at  the  top  of  the  cliff 
at  Highland  Light.  For  half  a  century  and 
more  he  has  watched  wind  and  wave,  made 
the  official  observations  for  the  Government 
Weather  Bureau,  and  reported  the  passing 
ships  to  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  in  Boston. 
Mr.  Small  thinks  that,  during  the  half-cen- 
tury, the  cliffs  have  receded  eighteen  inches  a 
year.  This  has  by  no  means,  however,  been 
uniform.  After  much  undermining  there  was 
at  one  time  a  slip  of  twenty  feet  in  width,  pro- 
ducing an  adjusted  slope,  which  remained  for 
a  long  time.  At  one  point  a  cesspool  overflow 
was  allowed  by  the  lighthouse  authorities  to 
discharge  over  the  bank,  but  the  resulting 
wash  was  so  destructive  that  this  disposal  of 
waste  was  abandoned.  The  Government 
bought  ten  acres  of  land  for  a  lighthouse  site, 
from  Mr.  Small's  ancestor,  in  1797.  Of  this 
area  about  five  acres  now  remain,  and  the 
time  is  not  distant  when  more  land  must  be 
acquired  and  the  light  set  farther  inland. 

The  retreat  of  the  outer  rampart  of  the  Cape 
is  no  imagining,  and  the  old  men  of  sixty  or 
seventy  years  ago  used  to  relate  that  they  had 


The  Changing  Shoreline         73 

hoed  corn  where  ships  then  sailed,  on  the  dis- 
appearing edge  of  the  town  of  Truro.  An 
observer  of  the  United  States  Coast  Survey  of 
a  generation  ago,  thought  the  cHffs  of  Truro  ^ 
receded  eight  feet  per  year  and  those  of  East-  ' 
ham  five  feet.  This  estimate  is  probably  too 
large  for  any  long-time  average.  It  is  believed 
there  may  have  been  one  third  of  a  mile  of 
retreat  in  historic  time,  that  is,  during  the 
three  or  four  himdred  years  in  which  the 
white  man  has  known  something  of  these 
shores.  This  would  give  us  four  or  five  feet  a 
year. 

No  geologist  has  told,  or  can  tell,  how  long 
a  time  has  passed  since  the  ice  retreated  from 
New  England.  And  none  can  say  at  what 
precise  date  the  land  took  its  present  stand  in 
relation  to  sea  level.  Still  one  can  rather  safely 
affirm  that  tke  trimming  of  the  outer  Cape 
has  been  going  on  for  several  thousand  years, 
and  that  it  will  require  several  thousand  more 
to  obliterate  Truro  and  Eastham  and  Orleans. 
The  land  may  rise,  or  it  may  go  down,  and 
such  change  would  defer  or  hasten  the  end. 
What  we  safely  get  in  such  problems  is  an 
order  of  magnitude,  in  other  words,  the  Cape 
has  been  losing  for  more  than  hundreds  of 
years,  and  for  less  than  tens  of  thousands — it 
falls  somewhere  in  the  thousands  in  the  past, 


74  Cape  Cod 

to  shape  the  long  curve  of  the  eastern  coast 
and  it  will  be  thousands  in  the  future  before 
the  Atlantic  waves  might  roll  unhindered 
against  Boston's  south  shore. 

That  noble  spirit  and  most  keen-witted 
traveler,  President  Timothy  Dwight  of  Yale 
College,  writing  a  hundred  -years  ago,  says 
that  the  permanence  of  Province  Town  had 
even  then  been  frequently  questioned.  Where 
ever  Dr.  Dwight  traveled,  he  had,  for  his 
time,  as  keen  notions  of  the  history  of  the 
land  forms  as  he  had  of  the  manners  and  mor- 
als of  the  people,  but  on  the  sands  of  the  Cape 
he  is  cautious,  as  well  he  might  be,  for  many 
conditions  enter  in  and  quite  possibly  the 
younger  lands  of  Provincetown  will  outlast  the 
older  and  higher  stretches  of  the  Cape  that 
lie  between  Provincetown  and  Chatham. 

The  older  glacial  part  of  the  Cape  comes  to 
an  end  at  High  Head  in  the  northern  part  of 
Truro.  All  beyond  that  is  a  later  creation 
belonging  after  the  glacial  time.  Go  south- 
ward thirty  miles  and  look  at  the  hills  around 
Stage  Harbor  at  Chatham.  They  too  are 
glacial,  but  the  long  beaches  of  Monomoy 
stretching  out  for  eight  miles  toward  Nan- 
tucket are  younger.  Thus  we  know  what  be- 
comes of  the  trimmings,  of  the  waste  shorn 
off  the  east  coast.     It  has  swept  northward 


The  Changing  Shoreline         75 

and  southward  and  formed  extensions  of  the 
Cape  in  both  directions.  The  head  of  the 
Cape  facing  the  ocean  has  been  cut  back  and 
wings,  or  spits,  built  right  and  left,  south  and 
north.  If  we  may  quote  the  rather  awkward, 
but  somewhat  expressive  phraseology  of  a 
specialist  on  shorelines,  Cape  Cod  is  a 
"Winged  behead-land.'' 

Between  High  Head  and  Long  Point  Light, 
where  one  rounds  into  Provincetown  Harbor, 
are  ten  square  miles  of  young  country  built 
by  waves  and  winds  out  of  the  wreckage  of 
the  older  Cape.  Every  visitor  from  Thoreau's 
day  onward,  has  gotten  some  notion  of  the 
swift  movements  of  Cape  Cod  beach  sands; 
they  roll  with  the  waves,  they  are  off  with  the 
winds.  A  stranded  barge  is  banked  speedily 
with  six  or  eight  feet  of  sand  closing  around 
its  hull.  Lagoons  form  behind  beach  ridges 
and  outrushing  waters  at  high  tide  change  the 
shapes  of  things  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye. 
A  wrecked  hulk  that  was  buried  in  one  season, 
stands  out  stark  when  next  season's  outing 
takes  you  along  the  shore. 

On  all  parts  of  the  coast  as  you  go  northward, 
the  wave  movement  comes  in  obliquely  to  the 
strand  and  the  waters  and  their  load  work 
northward  steadily  and  with  some  speed.  A 
floating  object  may  be  thrown  in  on  the  beach 


76  Cape  Cod 

but  it  is  pretty  sure  to  be  picked  up  again  and 
zigzagged  northward  and  westward  around  the 
end  of  the  Cape.  If  one  remembers  this  it  is 
not  hard  to  understand  the  origin  of  the  Prov- 
ince lands. 

High  Head  is  bordered  north,  east,  and  west 
by  cHffs  cut  by  the  waves  when  no  fending 
beaches  and  sand  dunes  lay  as  to-day  between 
them  and  the  assaulting  sea.  Now  marshes 
and  lake  waters  lie  around  High  Head  and 
east  and  west  of  these  marshes  are  beaches 
that  border  the  ocean  on  the  one  side  and  the 
Bay  on  the  other. 

Imagine  the  waves  washing  the  foot  of  High 
Head  cliffs.  The  cutting  of  the  east  shore  is 
in  progress  for  many  miles  southward.  The 
waste  moves  northward  and  is  carried  beyond 
High  Head  and  built  into  a  long  shoal  in  the 
direction  of  the  place  where  Provincetown  is 
now.  This  submerged  bar  receives  constant 
additions  and  begins  at  length  to  appear  above 
water  at  low  tide.  Then  it  appears  at  high 
tide,  the  sands  dry  and  the  winds  lift  them 
and  shift  them  and  begin  the  building  of  dunes. 
In  some  such  way  was  built  the  first  narrow 
belt  of  Province  lands. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  wasting 
southward  and  construction  northward.  The 
coastline  has  moved  a  little  farther  west  and 


The  Changing  Shoreline         77 

the  sands  now  migrate  northward  on  the  outer 
shore  of  the  new  belt  of  beach  and  dune,  form 
new  shoals,  leading  to  new  beaches  and  new 
dunes,  and  thus  to  the  widening  oceanward  of 
the  new  strip  of  land.  Several  such  lines  of 
beach  and  dune  are  detectible  north  and  east 
of  Provincetown. 

The  total  result  of  this  action  long  repeated, 
is  the  narrowing  of  the  older  Cape  as  its  shore 
was  crowded  to  the  west,  and  the  widening  of 
the  Province  lands  as  their  shore  was  developed 
toward  the  north  and  east.  Put  it  another 
way — for  some  thousands  of  years  the  whole 
line  of  shore  from  Nauset  to  Provincetown 
has  been  slowly  swinging  on  a  kind  of  pivot 
point  located  near  the  present  Highland  Life 
Saving  Station. 

There  are  other  facts  which  add  force  to 
this  conclusion.  Within  a  generation  salt 
waters  extended  up  Race  Run,  beyond  the 
point  where  the  highroad  from  Provincetown 
now  crosses  the  valley.  This  depression  has 
been  silted  up  and  thus  Race  Point  is  built 
into  solid  unity  with  the  dune  lands  back  of 
Provincetown.  And  now  Peaked  Hill  Bar  is 
forming  out  to  sea  and  its  shoals  have  sent 
many  a  ship  to  its  doom.  It  is  another  stage 
in  the  process  of  building  out  the  wave  and 
dune  lands  at  the  expense  of  the  glacial  lands 


78  Cape  Cod 

of  Truro,  Wellfleet  and  Eastham.  At  some 
futiire  time  Peaked  Hill  Bar  will  emerge  from 
the  sea,  there  will  be  another  "Race  Run" 
between  it  and  the  dunes ;  that  will  in  its  turn 
fill  up,  and  another  strip  of  land  will  be  added 
to  the  newer  end  of  the  Cape. 

Into  New  York's  lower  bay,  based  on  the 
mainland  of  New  Jersey,  Sandy  Hook  reaches 
northward  past  the  backwaters  of  Navesink 
and  Sandy  Hook  Bay.  This  little  peninsula 
takes  its  name  from  a  hook-shaped  point  that 
bends  around  to  the  west.  It  is  made  of  the 
sandy  waste  that  is  driven  northward  and 
then  swung  westward  in  waters  propelled  by 
easterly  winds.  Coney  Island  and  Rock- 
away  Beaches  show  the  same  kind  of  forma- 
tion, but  with  them  the  driving  movement  was 
from  the  east.  This  kind  of  form  is  known  to 
the  physiographer  as  a  hooked  spit. 

The  narrow  spiral  that  swings  around  from 
the  wide  dune  lands  to  inclose  the  harbor  of 
Provincetown  is  of  this  nature.  As  south  and 
east  winds  have  moved  the  waters  and  their 
load  northward  and  westward,  so  north, 
northwest  and  west  winds  have  carried  the 
work  of  land  extension  through  almost  every 
point  of  the  compass,  and  the  very  tip  end  of 
the  Cape  at  Long  Point  Light  is  pointing 
northeastward. 


The  Changing  Shoreline         79 

Now  go  up  the  shore  to  the  beginnings  of 
Nauset  Beach  in  Eastham  and  Orleans.  Fol- 
low the  inner  shore  through  the  ins  and  outs 
of  Town  Cove,  and  along  all  the  windings  of 
Pleasant  Bay  and  Chatham  Harbor.  This  was 
the  old  outer  shore  of  that  part  of  the  Cape 
and  is  about  as  the  glacier  left  it.  Outside  of 
the  mainlands  of  the  Cape,  Nauset  beach, 
capped  with  dimes,  runs  for  nearly  fifteen 
miles.  It  is  a  combination  of  spit  and  barrier 
beach  built  out  of  that  part  of  the  waste  of 
the  Cape  which  is  moving  to  the  south.  And 
there  are  more  than  fifteen  miles  of  it,  for  the 
long  beach  of  Monomoy,  which  goes  miles 
south  of  Chatham,  is  a  continuation  of  the 
same  formation,  corresponding  in  the  south  to 
the  Provincetown  spit  on  the  north. 

The  southern  point  of  Monomoy  has  for 
many  years  grown  toward  the  southwest, 
sometimes  as  much  as  one  htindred  and  sev- 
enty-five feet  a  year,  but  sometimes  much 
more  slowly.  From  the  end  of  Monomoy, 
shoals  extend  to  Great  Point,  the  northeast 
extremity  of  Nantucket.  So  it  would  look  as 
if  the  entrance  to  Nantucket  Sound  from  the 
east  was  narrowing,  but  it  is  not  likely  that 
this  gap  of  something  like  eight  miles  will  ever 
be  filled  and  closed  to  ships.  Great  Point  is 
not  growing,  but  has  sometimes  worn  away 


80  Cape  Cod 

and  the  narrower  the  passage  becomes  the 
more  the  passing  currents  are  concentrated 
and  given  eroding  power.  So  we  need  not 
apprehend  the  coming  of  a  time  when  a  vessel 
may  not  follow  the  route  of  three  centuries 
around  the  Cape. 

Many  changes  have  taken  place  in  the  Nau- 
set  Beaches  and  their  openings  since  accurate 
charts  were  first  attempted.  Pratt,  in  his  his- 
tory of  Eastham,  says  that  Nauset,  the  only 
opening  between  Race  Point,  far  in  the  north, 
and  Chatham  on  the  south,  was  once  in  East- 
ham,  but  has  been  moving  south  and  is  now  in 
the  town  of  Orleans.  There  is  much  to  show 
that  the  openings  leading  to  Chatham  have 
changed  during  the  white  man's  period.  In- 
deed at  the  present  time  Monomoy  is  a  part  of 
the  Cape  or  an  island  according  to  the  pres- 
ence or  absence  of  shifting  sand.  A  single 
storm  known  as  the  Minot's  Lighthouse  gale, 
broke  through  Nauset  Beach  in  1851  and  the 
channel  thus  made  was  still  eleven  feet  deep 
sixteen  years  later. 

Tradition  says  that  there  were  ancient  pas- 
sages across  the  Cape,  and  of  one  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  It  was  through  a  channel  in  the 
town  of  Orleans  which  is  known  as  Jeremiah's 
Gutter.  It  was  to  this  that  Captain  Bartholo- 
mew Gosnold  must  have  referred.    He  was  on 


The  Changing  Shoreline         8i 

this  coast  in  1602,  which  was  the  year  of  his 
stay  on  the  EKzabeth  Islands.  He  says  that 
Cape  Cod,  that  is,  the  northern  part  of  what 
we  call  the  Cape,  was  an  island. 

Convincing  proof  of  this  is  given  by  a  map, 
prepared  as  a  British  naval  chart  soon  after 
the  year  1700.  A  marginal  note  on  this  map 
records  the  voyage  of  a  whaleboat,  sailing 
under  the  governor's  orders,  to  seize  the  pirate 
ship  Whido,  which  was  wrecked  in  171 7.  The 
captain  in  command  of  the  whaleboat  buried 
more  than  a  hundred  men  who  had  been 
drowned  in  the  loss  of  the  pirate  ship.  Six  of 
the  pirates,  who  had  been  put  on  board  of  a 
seized  ship  as  a  prize  crew,  were  captured, 
tried  in  Boston  and  executed  for  their  crimes. 

The  venerable  but  alert  town  clerk  of  Or- 
leans was  good  enough  to  add  his  informing 
presence  on  a  visit  to  this  historic  channel. 
About  a  mile  north  of  Orleans  village,  on  the 
west  side  of  Town  Cove,  where  Myrick's  Point 
heads  into  the  water,  the  road  crosses  a  narrow 
swale.  This  strip  of  marsh  leads  through  the 
fields  westward,  is  crossed  by  another  road, 
and  then  by  the  railroad.  From  the  rai'^road 
it  is  but  a  short  distance  to  the  head  of  Boat 
Meadow  Creek,  a  tidal  channel  which  leads 
through  widening  marshes,  into  Caxoe  Cod 
Bay. 


82  Cape  Cod 

The  channel  was  from  one  hundred  to  a 
hiindred  and  fifty  feet  in  width  and  is  still 
bordered  in  several  places  by  low  cliffs  of 
erosion  which  date  from  the  time  when  the 
tidal  waters  freely  pulsed  from  sea  to  sea. 
Mr.  Cummings,  the  town  clerk,  remembers 
the  period  when  the  marsh  was  a  salt-water 
swamp.  A  canal  that  was  dug  through  a  sec- 
tion of  the  passage  in  1812  he  remembers  as 
open  and  clear.  The  canal  was  made  for  the 
passage  of  salt  boats,  thus  enabling  them  to 
escape  the  vigilance  of  British  cruisers.  As 
late  as  1844,  ^^e  sea  is  described  as  occasion- 
ally sweeping  through  at  high  tide. 

The  canal  section  now  shows  as  sharply 
distinguished  from  the  marsh  on  either  side  by 
a  heavy  growth  of  cat-tail  flags.  West  of  the 
railroad  a  dike  has  in  recent  years  been  built 
across  the  Gutter.  But  for  this  dike,  modern 
tides  might  even  yet  cross  the  Cape. 

As  one  pulls  into  Provincetown  Harbor  from 
Boston,  imposing  cliffs  rise  on  the  view  to  the 
east  and  southeast.  They  are  on  the  shores 
of  Truro  and  Wellfleet  and  have  been  made  on 
the  Bay  side  as  the  eastern  cliffs  have  been 
formed  on  the  Atlantic  side  of  the  Cape.  Here 
also  the  wasting  sands  have  been  moved  both 
northward  and  southward.  Those  shifting 
northward  have  been  built  into  the  beach 


The  Changing  Shoreline         83 

which  now  encloses  the  old  East  Harbor.  The 
southeastern  end  of  this  inclosure  is  a  bog 
lying  under  High  Head,  and  is  known  as  Moon 
Pond  Meadow. 

There  has  been  a  southward  drive  of  waste 
on  the  west  of  Wellfieet  Harbor,  and  its  effects 
are  visible  as  far  as  Billingsgate  Light.  If  one 
will  consult  the  Wellfieet  section  of  the  United 
States  Geological  Survey's  map  he  may  ob- 
serve that  Bound  Brook  Island,  Grifhn  Island, 
Great  Island  and  Great  Beach  Hill  are  not 
islands  at  all,  though  three  of  them  are  so 
named.  They  are  tied  to  each  other  and  to 
the  mainland  at  South  Truro  by  small  barrier 
beaches  except  between  Bound  Brook  and 
Griffin  Islands,  where  the  link  is  an  area  of 
tidal  marsh. 

About  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution 
there  was  published  in  the  Atlantic  Neptune 
in  London,  a  map  for  the  use  of  the  British 
Navy,  in  which  all  these  lands  were  shown  as 
real  islands.  Hence  the  tying  beaches  have 
developed  within  the  past  hundred  and  fifty 
years.  It  is  said  that  Billingsgate  Island,  now 
the  site  of  a  lighthouse,  was  formerly  joined 
to  the  land  north  of  it.  Another  change  is 
shown  in  the  fact  that  a  small  crescent-shaped 
island  about  a  third  of  a  mile  south  of  Bill- 
ingsgate as   shown  on  the  Geological  Sur- 


8*  Cape  Cod 

vey  map  of  thirty  years  ago,  does  not  ap- 
pear at  all  on  the  Coast  Survey  map  of  the 
year  1916. 

The  waste  moving  to  the  southward  does 
not  stop  with  the  islands  that  form  the  outer 
border  of  Wellfieet  Harbor,  for  soimdings  re- 
veal extensive  shoals  with  the  waters  varying 
from  seven  to  sixteen  feet,  extending  into  Cape 
Cod  Bay  seven  to  eight  miles  southwest  of 
Billingsgate  Island. 

Other  shores  of  the  Old  Colony  are  tmder- 
going  constant  changes,  of  a  less  conspicuous 
nature  perhaps  than  those  of  the  lower  and 
more  exposed  parts  of  the  Cape.  The  Coast 
Survey  chart  of  19 16  warns  the  sailor  that 
Barnstable  Bar  is  changing  and  that  buoy 
positions  are  imreliable.  In  most  respects  the 
shores  around  Plymouth  are  about  as  they 
were  in  Mayfloiver  times,  but  the  cliffs  of 
Manomet  must  have  receded  somewhat  even 
though  the  Bay  waters  attack  less  violently 
than  those  of  the  ocean. 

The  Plymouth  beach  has  not  greatly 
changed  except  that  it  is  now  bare  of  trees,  an 
old  map  showing  that  it  was  wooded.  Gurnet, 
a  glacial  hill,  tied  to  the  mainland  by  the 
growth  of  Duxbury  Beach  before  the  white 
man's  time,  looked  to  the  Mayflower  mariners 
no  doubt  about  as  it  appears  to-day  to  the 


The  Changing  Shoreline         85 

excursionist  from  Boston,  save  that  it  was 
innocent  of  lights  or  houses. 

Davis,  in  his  Ajtcient  Landmarks  of  Plym- 
outh, quotes  from  de  Monts's  expedition  of 
1605,  Champlain's  description,  Champlain 
being  an  officer  under  de  Monts.  He  refers 
to  the  present  Gurnet  as  "aknost  an  island, 
covered  with  wood,  principally  pines,"  and 
then  he  says, "there  are  two  islets  in  the  harbor 
which  are  not  seen  until  one  has  entered,  and 
around  which  it  is  almost  entirely  dry  at  low 
water."  Here  we  have,  fifteen  years  before 
the  sailing  of  the  Mayjioiver,  a  rather  detailed 
description  which  proves  clearly  enough  that 
the  beach  which  now  extends  from  Gurnet  to 
Saquish  had  not  then  come  into  existence,  and 
Clark  and  Saquish  were  the  two  islands  lying 
where  Duxbury  and  PhTnouth  waters  mingle. 

The  south  shore  shows  no  such  long  and 
even  strand  lines  as  appear  on  both  sides  of 
the  lower  Cape;  it  is  indeed  intermediate  in 
its  character  between  the  outer  shores  and  the 
borders  of  Buzzards  Ba3^  The  waters  of  the 
soimds  have  made  considerable  progress  in 
forming  even  curves,  by  trimming  back  the 
headlands  and  by  throwing  spits  across  the 
openings  of  the  bays.  A  fine  example  is  seen 
in  the  beautiful  crescent  of  the  barrier  beach 
which  is  so  attractive  to  bathers  of  Center\ille 


86  Cape  Cod 

and  Craigsville.  Here  the  inner  and  older 
shore  was  ragged. 

Going  westward  we  find  the  new  and  outer 
beaches  of  Dead  Neck  and  Poponesset,  and  the 
cliffs  of  Succonesset,  are  results  of  the  build- 
ing and  the  trimming  which  is  giving  evenness 
to  the  shore,  and  changing  into  land-locked 
waters,  Great  Bay,  Osterville  Harbor  and 
Poponesset  Bay.  The  new  and  swiftly  devel- 
oping shores  from  Waquoit  and  Menauhant, 
along  the  whole  series  of  old  bay  mouths  on 
the  south  shore  of  Falmouth,  are  illustrations 
of  the  same  kinds  of  changes,  which  are  in 
progress  before  our  very  eyes,  and  involve 
many  temporary  shiftings  between  the  status 
of  bay  and  lake.  But  we  may  be  sure,  if  we 
keep  our  hands  off  and  our  dredges  away,  that 
the  lake  and  the  fresh  water  will  win  in  the 
end,  and  that  the  time  will  come  when  the 
whole  south  shore  will  form  an  eas}^  succession 
of  gentle  curves  melting  into  one  another. 

Rather  less  has  been  achieved  in  shoreline 
evolution  on  the  Buzzards  Bay  borders.  The 
Bay  is  narrow,  and  has  a  lesser  sweep  of  winds, 
while  the  Elizabeth  Islands  serve  as  a  barrier 
to  prevent  the  free  movement  of  ocean  waves 
toward  the  inner  shores.  Hence  we  can  ac- 
count for  the  roughness  and  immaturity  of  the 
shorelines  about  Woods  Hole,  about  Quisset 


The  Changing  Shoreline         87 

Harbor  and  all  the  way  north  to  Wenaumet 
Neck  and  Buzzards  Bay  and  around  to  New 
Bedford.  Nevertheless  the  observant  eye  will 
discern  interesting  and  swift  changes  going  on, 
in  the  closing  of  bays,  the  silting  of  shallows, 
the  trimming  of  shores  and  the  tying  of  islands. 
Buzzards  Bay,  Vineyard  and  Nantucket 
Sounds,  Cape  Cod  Bay  and  the  great  ocean — 
it  is  an  ascendant  order  of  efficiency  in  which 
the  smaller  and  the  greater  waters  have  shaped 
the  lands  on  their  borders. 

Thinking  of  the  Cape,  it  is  the  winds  that 
have  seized  the  common  fancy  more  than  the 
waves.  Though  not  always  remembered,  the 
winds  create  the  waves,  even  though  they 
blow  a  thousand  miles  away  and  great  rollers 
break  on  the  shore  in  days  of  almost  perfect 
calm.  The  energy  is  there  but  it  was  applied 
to  the  ocean  surface  a  long  way  off. 

But  not  always  on  the  Cape  is  it  a  long  way 
off.  There  are  southeasters  and  northeasters, 
and  if  not  these,  westerlies  and  southwest er- 
lies.  And  sometimes  a  gale  is  so  strong  that 
you  lie  down  on  the  wind,  lest  you  be  tossed 
over  the  sea  cliff  or  driven  down  the  slopes  of 
a  glacial  kettle  hole. 

When  one  has  seen  the  Cape  as  it  is,  he 
knows  how  small  a  part  consists  of  deserts  of 
wind-driven  sand.     Where  the  Cape  is  not 


88  Cape  Cod 

farm  and  field,  it  is  forest  and  scrub,  or  moor- 
land, with  mosses,  patches  of  resilient  mesh  ot 
wild  cranberry  and  clumps  of  bayberry,  blue- 
berry and  beach  plum.  The  wind  however  is 
always  at  work,  sometimes  on  exposed  bits  of 
light,  glacial  soil  in  the  interior,  and  in  no 
trivial  measure  on  the  bare  faces  of  the  sea 
cliffs.  It  rushed  up  these  slopes  or  along  them, 
removing  loose  material,  and  has  on  the  east 
coast  in  many  places,  built  sand  hills  at  their 
crests  on  the  great  foundation  of  glacial  de- 
posits. These  are,  nevertheless,  the  lesser 
works  of  the  winds. 

The  real  fields  of  sand  dunes  are  in  the  Prov- 
ince lands  beyond  High  Head,  and  extending 
from  the  crescent  of  Provincetown  northward 
to  the  open  sea;  down  the  long  stretches  of 
Nauset  and  Monomoy,  embracing  half  the 
outer  length  of  the  Cape,  and  for  miles  on 
Sandy  Neck,  between  Cape  Cod  Bay  and  the 
great  marshes  of  Barnstable.  Minor  stretches 
of  sand  dune  run  out  from  Town  Neck  in 
Sandwich,  on  the  Falmouth  beaches,  and  on 
various  other  Cape  Cod  shores  as  well  as  on 
the  long  barrier  beaches  of  Plymouth  and 
Duxbury.  Of  greatest  extent  and  interest  are 
the  dune  fields  of  the  Province  lands,  for  here 
the  winds  and  the  waves  have  been  wholly 
and  alone  responsible  for  reclaiming  from  the 


The  Changing  Shoreline         89 

ocean  the  ten  square  miles  of  the  Cape  that 
lie  beyond  High  Head  in  Truro. 

We  have  followed  the  currents  as  they 
shifted  the  sands  of  the  east  shore  northward 
and  westward  to  form  the  great  hooked  spit 
that  incloses  the  harbor  of  Provincetown. 
First  a  shoal  develops,  then  emerges  a  beach, 
and  the  sand  quickly  drying  under  sun  and 
wind  is  picked  up  and  thrown  into  heaps. 
Thus  barrier  beaches  become  dune  belts  and 
when  such  barriers  are  joined  to  the  land,  as 
in  the  filling  of  Race  Run,  the  migrating  sands 
retreat  upon  the  adjoining  grounds  that  lie 
inshore. 

At  first  on  the  tip  of  the  Cape,  there  were 
no  adjoining  lands  and  we  may  picture  a 
single  curving  beach  ridge  thrown  out  beyond 
the  older  glacial  foreland,  with  dune  hills  like 
those  of  Nauset  or  Sandy  Neck  at  the  present 
time.  But  successive  bars  and  developing 
beaches  were  built  outside  of  the  southern  and 
primitive  beach,  and  by  those  various  growths, 
the  outer  cape,  which  is  narrow  at  East  Har- 
bor, has  attained  a  width  of  three  miles,  where 
the  State  road  now  crosses  it  from  Province- 
town  to  the  life  saving  station.  The  entire 
three  miles  are  in  dune  country,  first  through 
the  gardens  in  the  hollows  back  of  the  village, 
then  winding  through  a  forest,  then  a  mile  of 


90  Cape  Cod 

sands,  bare  and  glistening  save  for  citimps  of 
beach  grass  and  some  small  pine  trees  planted 
by  the  hand  of  man. 

Within  the  dunes  are  a  nimiber  of  lakes,  ly- 
ing in  unfilled  depressions  among  the  sand  hills 
— Shank  Painter,  Duck,  Round,  Pasture  and 
Clapps  Ponds.  This  great  dune  field  invites 
a  view  from  the  top  of  the  Pilgrim  Monument, 
whose  foundation,  a  hundred  feet  above  the 
sea,  is  sunk  in  the  top  of  a  leveled  sand  hill. 

If  one  brooks  at  the  climb,  let  him  go  aside 
from  the  road  as  he  crosses  to  the  sea,  on  a 
hilltop  a  mile  from  the  ocean.  The  perch  is 
to  the  right  of  the  roadway  and  a  few  feet 
higher.  Toward  the  sea  is  Race  Run  and 
beyond  it  the  outer  range  of  dunes.  The  look- 
out is  over  Sahara — with  an  adjoining  oasis  of 
forest.  In  the  strong  light,  the  green  against 
the  gray,  and  the  blue  sea  beyond,  in  the 
shifting  forms,  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  wilder- 
ness of  a  imique  kind,  the  lover  of  inland 
scenery  may  find  a  fresh  sensation,  and  one 
may  understand  how  large  is  the  sand  world 
in  the  lure  that  brings  the  painter  and  the 
would-be  painter  to  his  summer  lingering  in 
ancient  Provincetown. 

The  everlastingness  of  hills  does  very  well  as 
a  poetic  symbol  of  permanence,  but  to  the  stu- 
dent of  the  earth  even  rock-bedded  hills  and 


The  Changing  Shoreline         91 

granite  mountains  are  passing  away.  A  sand 
hill  however  is  a  thing  of  overnight,  physio- 
graphically  speaking.  There  is  not  much  to 
hold  the  sand  grains  of  a  dune  together,  and 
they  migrate  about  as  freely  as  the  falling 
leaves  in  October  winds. 

Look  at  a  sand  hill  during  a  high  wind  and 
see  the  attack  on  the  exposed  slope,  where  the 
wind  picks  up  the  grains,  whirls  them  over  the 
crest  of  the  hill  and  drops  them  to  rest  on  the 
lee  side.  Thus  one  slope  fades  and  the  other 
advances,  and  bit  by  bit  the  whole  hill  shifts 
its  center,  until  in  time  the  old  groimd  is  left 
and  new  ground  occupied. 

There  are  endless  changes  of  form  also. 
Even  if  the  dune  be  covered  with  beach  grass 
or  scrub,  the  wind  may  attack  a  single  exposed 
patch,  blow  out  the  sand,  deepen  the  hole,  en- 
large its  borders,  removing  the  core  of  the  hill 
and  almost  giving  the  blowhole  and  its  rim 
the  semblance  of  a  volcanic  cone  with  its 
crater.  Here  and  there  a  cltimp  of  vegetation 
binds  a  central  piece  of  the  hill  fast  and  the 
wind  removes  all  the  flowing  fringe  or  base, 
giving  the  core  or  remnant  abnormal  steepness 
under  its  protective  cap  of  gnarled  roots  or 
still  living  green.  Such  eccentricities  of  sand- 
hill evolution  attract  the  artist  colony,  and  fix 
themselves  on  many  canvases. 


92  Cape  Cod 

In  deserts  and  strand  lands  centuries  have 
seen  the  ofttimes  painful  efforts  of  men  to  fend 
off  their  enemy,  the  migrating  sands.  One 
may  see  the  struggle  on  the  Mediterranean 
borders  of  ancient  Philistia,  on  the  edges  of 
Saharan  oases,  on  the  shores  of  France,  Britain 
or  the  Low  Countries,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Colimibia  River,  and,  for  at  least  two  hundred 
years,  in  the  outer  parts  of  Cape  Cod. 

On  the  French  coast  and  elsewhere,  stake 
and  brush  fences  are  carried  along  the  crest  of 
a  dune,  that  the  sands  may  lodge  in  and 
beyond  them.  When  the  fence  is  engulfed  an- 
other is  erected  above  it,  until  after  sufficient 
upward  building,  the  winds  fail  to  carry  the 
sand  over  and  a  barrier  dune  has  come  into 
being  which  protects  the  inland  fields  from 
invasion. 

This  method  has  never  been  used  on  the 
Cape,  where  the  more  widespread  method  pre- 
vails of  supplementing  nature's  protective 
efforts,  by  preserving  natural  vegetation  and 
by  artificial  plantings  of  grasses  and  trees. 
Readers  of  Thoreau  recall  his  playful  imag- 
inings about  tying  up  the  Cape  to  its  moor- 
ings, and  they  remember  his  references  to  the 
warning-out  of  the  townsmen  in  the  spring  to 
plant  beach  grass  in  exposed  situations. 

Fewer  than  the  readers  of  Thoreau's  classic 


'  4    M 


The  Changing  Shoreline         93 

sketches  are  those  who  know  that  one  of  the 
objects  of  the  agricultural  explorers  sent  out 
all  over  the  world  from  Washington  has  been 
to  find  sand-binding  grasses,  which  would 
avail  to  hold  dunes  in  place  for  the  salvation 
of  harbors  and  cultivated  lands.  The  dangers 
of  sand  shifting  have  long  been  recognized  on 
Cape  Cod  and  the  great  fear  was  that  the  sands 
might  invade  the  harbor  of  Provincetown  and 
thus  destroy  one  of  the  most  important 
havens  on  the  New  England  coast. 

The  force  of  the  winter  storms  is  little  real- 
ized by  the  summer  inhabitants.  A  single 
storm  may  dash  the  sands  so  effectively  on 
windows  close  to  the  shore  that  their  trans- 
parency is  destroyed.  At  the  Highland  Life 
Saving  Station,  the  life  guards  say  that  they 
have  covered  a  pane  of  glass  with  a  stencil, 
and  have  seen  letters  well  etched  in  a  storm 
blowing  for  three  hours.  Sand  grains  as  large 
as  grains  of  wheat  have  been  freely  swept  up 
from  the  beaches  and  deposited  on  the  dunes, 
wind  velocities  of  fifty  to  seventy  miles  an  hour 
being  not  uncommon. 

Most  of  the  dune  lands  belong  to  the  State 
and  are  therefore  open  to  public  measures 
to  secure  their  stability  and  to  protect  the 
harbor.  The  sovereignty  of  the  State  or  the 
national  government  has  extended  through  a 


94  Cape  Cod 

period  of  more  than  two  hundred  years,  and 
beach  grass  has  by  pubHc  authority  been 
planted  for  much  more  than  a  century. 

The  forests  that  exist  on  the  end  of  the  Cape 
and  the  more  extensive  woods  that  are  thought 
to  have  stood  here  when  the  Pilgrims  came, 
have  provided  a  natural  means  of  holding  the 
sands  and  keeping  the  hills  from  migrating, 
but  the  removal  of  trees  on  this  and  other 
parts  of  the  Cape,  has  opened  new  areas  to  the 
onslaught  of  the  winds.  The  plantings  car- 
ried on  for  several  generations  have  in  some 
measure  atoned  for  the  interrupted  work  of 
nature. 

The  beach  grass  is  the  most  important  of 
the  sand-binding  plants.  It  sends  up  its  tall 
stems  and  the  freshly  blowing  sands  lodge  in 
the  grassy  thicket.  Into  these  new  sands  the 
stems  send  out  new  roots  while  the  lower  and 
older  roots  die.  Thus  the  growth  maintains 
itself  at  higher  levels  with  the  upgrowth  of  the 
hill,  and  the  mesh  of  roots  and  stalks  holds  the 
sands  from  blowing  away. 

Other  plants  useful  on  the  dunes  are  the 
beach  pea,  the  goldenrod,  sand  wormwood, 
bayberry  shrubs,  wild  roses  and  beach  plums. 
All  these  are  either  herbs  or  low  shrubs  and 
when  they  have  developed  a  soil,  trees  may 
come  in  and  possess  the  ground,  especially 


The  Changing  Shoreline         95 

pitch  pines  and  oaks,  with  a  few  beeches, 
birches,  and  maples  in  some  places.  Huckle- 
berry and  blueberry  bushes  also  help  to  fill  in 
the  spaces  in  these  forests  and  the  cranberry 
and  other  bog  plants  get  a  foothold  in  the 
moist  places. 

The  greater  extension  of  the  old  forests  is 
shown  by  forest  materials  which  have  been  re- 
vealed in  places  where  the  anciently  invading 
sand  has  been  blown  away,  and  stimips  have 
been  seen  at  low  tide  near  Wood  End  Light- 
house, where  no  fragment  of  living  forest  ex- 
ists to-day.  One  investigator  thinks  three 
fourths  of  the  bare  sand  surfaces  of  to-day  were 
forested  in  historic  times,  and  we  may  recall 
that  Champlain's  map  of  Plymouth  and  its 
harbor  shows  trees  on  the  Plymouth  barrier 
beach  in  front  of  the  present  town  and  harbor. 
Not  only  the  cutting  of  trees  for  shipbuilding 
as  well  as  for  fuel,  but  the  pasturing  of  stock 
was  responsible  for  the  modem  exposure  of 
the  sands  to  removal.  And  fires  have  also 
played  their  part,  both  here  and  on  many  other 
parts  of  the  Cape,  finding  ready  fuel  in  the 
pitch  pines  and  dead  undergrowth.  The  salt 
factories  which  were  planted  in  all  parts  of 
the  Cape,  made  for  some  decades  heavy  de- 
mands on  the  fuel  supply,  until  the  processes 
of  solar  evaporation  replaced  artificial  heat. 


96  Cape  Cod 

The  growth  of  Provincetown  led  to  the  de- 
struction of  the  trees  and  beach  grass  within 
the  narrow  coastal  strip  on  which  the  village 
is  planted.  Many  houses  were  erected  on 
piles  that  the  sand  might  pass  under  them  and 
not  engulf  them,  the  use  of  the  public  road 
kept  the  sands  exposed  and  the  goal  of  all 
these  loose  materials  was  deposition  in  the 
harbor. 

Legislation  has  been  enacted  at  intervals 
from  a  date  as  remote  as  1703.  It  was  sought 
to  stop  the  boxing  of  pine  trees  for  turpentine, 
to  restrict  the  pasturing  of  cattle  and  to  pre- 
vent the  cutting  of  any  trees  within  a  half-mile 
of  the  shore.  Determined  efforts  were  made 
by  the  State  of  Massachusetts  in  1825,  and 
other  restrictive  measures  were  taken  at  inter- 
vals of  a  few  years  throughout  the  last  century. 
Thus  a  "beach  grass  committee"  for  planting 
was  an  institution  of  Provincetown  from  1838 
to  1893.  In  the  last-named  year  the  munici- 
pality was  granted  possession  and  control  of 
the  lands  on  which  the  town  stands,  all  the 
rest  remaining  as  to-day,  the  possession  of  the 
Commonwealth,  bearing  the  name  of  the 
Province  lands.  Much  beach  grass  has  from 
time  to  time  been  planted  and  similar  measures 
were  long  taken  by  the  adjoining  town  of 
Truro,  to  protect  its  exposed  areas. 


The  Changing  Shoreline         97 

About  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the 
sea  broke  through  the  outer  beach  that  de- 
fended East  Harbor  and  it  was  felt  that  the 
main  harbor  was  in  danger.  From  that  time 
the  planting  was  actively  carried  on  by  town 
authorities,  by  the  State  and  the  nation.  In 
1903,  the  general  government  had  spent  more 
than  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars 
to  protect  Provincetown  Harbor,  and  one  item 
of  this  outlay  was  for  the  planting  of  beach 
grass.  It  was  foimd  about  twenty-five  years 
ago  that  the  exposed  sands  of  the  outer  dunes 
north  of  the  forest  area  were  invading  the 
forest  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  feet  per  year,  thus 
threatening  in  no  distant  time  town  and  har- 
bor. Hence  the  plantings  which  the  visitor 
may  now  see  as  he  passes  out  beyond  the 
forest-zone  toward  the  ocean  border. 

These  plantings  consist  of  beach  grass  and 
pine  seedlings  and  in  some  areas  these  have 
been  supplemented  by  the  laying  down  of 
brush  covers,  which  retain  the  sands  of  exposed 
crests  until  the  vegetation  has  secured  its  hold. 
Similar  plantations  of  beach  grass  have  been 
made  in  other  dune  areas  of  the  United  States, 
as  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan,  and  on 
certain  Oregon  and  North  Carolina  beaches. 

All  this  represents  a  form  of  private  and 
public  activity  altogether  strange  to  most  pec- 


98  Cape  Cod 

pie  who  live  at  long  distances  from  sea  or  lake, 
and  it  is  one  phase  of  the  environment  of  the 
sea,  and  one  example  of  what  the  sea  compels 
men  to  do,  who  live  by  the  ocean  and  must 
conform  their  lives  to  its  activities. 

In  the  report  of  the  Trustees  of  Public  Res- 
ervations, giving,  in  1893,  the  results  of  an 
investigation  in  1892,  a  curious  fact  is  stated — 
that  while  the  soil  in  the  vegetation  areas  of 
the  Province  lands  is  nowhere  more  than  three 
or  four  inches  deep,  ''the  underlying  sand  is 
wonderfully  retentive  of  moisture,  so  that  this 
particular  terminus  of  the  Cape  presents  in 
its  uninjured  parts  a  more  verdurous  landscape 
than  the  main  body  of  the  outer  Cape  can 
show." 

Timothy  D wight,  after  a  keenly  vivid  and 
picturesque  description  of  the  sandy  wilder- 
ness of  Provincetown,  explains  at  length  the 
growth  of  the  beach  grass,  the  planting  in 
rows  with  alternate  spacing,  or  breaking  of 
joints  against  the  wind,  and  then  as  was  not 
imcommon  with  him,  improves  the  occasion 
by  a  soliloquy  of  admiration  for  the  divine 
ordering  which  had  arranged  to  put  this  plant 
in  this  particular  place.  It  is  not  here  lightly 
quoted,  for  be  it  remembered,  Dwight  was 
interpreting  the  arrangements  of  nature  after 
the  manner  of  Paley  and  not  of  Darwin.    A 


-^^^f 


~%y 


"^ 


i 


The  Changing  Shoreline         99 

half-century  was  to  pass  before  the  Origin  of 
Species  would  come  off  the  press,  and  the  pro- 
gressive adaptation  of  growing  things  to  envi- 
ronment was  perforce  undreamed  of  by  the 
Yale  theologian.  His  pre-Darwinian  satisfac- 
tion must  not  be  lost  to  any  reader  of  Cape 
lore.  ''The  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the  Crea- 
tor, exhibited  in  the  formation  of  this  plant, 
in  this  place,  certainly  claim  the  admiration 
and  gratitude  of  man.  But  for  this  single,  un- 
sightly vegetable,  the  slender  barrier,  which 
here  has  so  long  resisted  the  ravages  of  the 
ocean,  had,  not  improbably,  been  long  since 
washed  away.  In  the  ruins.  Province  Town 
and  its  most  useful  harbor,  must  have  been 
lost  ....  No  other  plant  grows  on  this 
sand.  The  purpose  for  which  it  seems  to  have 
been  created,  it  answers  easily,  permanently 
and  perfectly.'* 

One  can  hardly  share  the  verdict  that  this 
is  an  ''unsightly  vegetable,"  having  beheld  in 
every  phase  of  sun  and  shadow  its  marvelous, 
gray  green  tone,  or  having  stood  to  admire  on 
the  sand,  the  circles,  true  as  compass  ever 
struck,  made  by  leaves  of  beach  grass,  with 
drooping  tips  driven  round  and  round  by 
ocean  winds. 

Outside  of  shore  areas,  and  on  the  greater 
body  of  glacial  lands  which  form  the  bulk  of 


100  Cape  Cod 

the  Cape,  the  winds  have  no  widespread  effects 
in  the  movement  of  earth  materials.  This  is 
quite  contrary  to  popular  opinion,  which  to- 
day persists  in  looking  upon  all  Cape  Cod 
hills  as  sand  dunes,  and  has  slightly  if  at  all 
outgrown  the  belief,  expressed  long  ago  in 
Mitchell's  View  of  the  United  States  that  the 
Cape  "consists  chiefly  of  hills  of  white  sand 
mostly  destitute  of  vegetation.'* 


CHAPTER  IV 

OLD  COLONY  NAMES  AND  TOWNS 

In  a  brilliant  August  morning  by  the  shaded 
grave  of  Joseph  Jefferson,  a  summer  visitant 
met  by  chance,  spoke  of  those  who  were 
'  'sympathetic  with  the  Cape. ' '  If  she  had  been 
an3rwhere  else  in  Massachusetts,  and  had  said 
"the  Cape,"  there  could  have  been  no  mistake 
and  no  one  would  have  thought  she  intended 
Cape  Ann  or  Cape  Elizabeth.  What  the 
gentle  lady  meant  by  ''sympathetic,"  is 
not  easy  to  define,  but  it  is  not  difficult  to 
know. 

No  name  of  royalty  clings  to  this  best- 
known  and  best-loved  of  New  England  fore- 
lands, though  Captain  John  Smith  tried  to 
make  it  Cape  James.  Those  who  have  the 
quality  of  sympathy  are  glad  that  here  is  no 
Wonder-strands  of  the  Norse,  no  Cap  Blanc 
of  Champlain,  or  New  Holland  of  Henry 
Hudson.  Gosnold  at  first  sought  to  fasten 
Shoal  Hope  upon  the  Cape,  but  had  a  better 
thought,  and  from  him  it  gained  the  plain  and 

1 01 


102  Cape  Cod 

worthy  name  which  may  last  as  long  as  the 
waves  wash  its  sandy  shores. 

John  Smith  had  a  keener  sense  when  he  gave 
to  the  great  region  whose  shores  he  explored 
and  mapped  the  name  New  England,  for  in 
surface,  climate  and  shoreline,  as  well  as  in 
the  industries  and  principles  of  its  people,  the 
new  country  compares  in  manifold  ways  with 
the  old.  With  all  suitableness  therefore,  the 
map  of  New  England  is  sprinkled  everywhere 
with  English  names.  They  are  spread  in  a 
sort  of  historical  layer  over  the  older  deposit 
of  Indian  designations. 

This  overlapping  stratification  of  names  is 
carried  far  in  New  York.  Witness  the  Dutch 
wave  of  migration  in  the  Hudson  and  lower 
Mohawk  valleys,  the  Palatine  German  on  the 
upper  Mohawk,  and  the  English  names  coming 
by  way  of  New  England  to  central,  western 
and  northern  New  York.  The  Empire  State 
goes  far  also  in  the  appropriation  of  the  names 
of  early  federal  and  local  statesmen. 

The  Old  Colony,  in  contrast,  got  its  outfit 
of  names  before  there  were  any  federal  states- 
men and  the  early  comers  did  not  so  freely  as 
in  New  York  burden  the  towns  and  villages 
with  family  or  first-settler  names,  with  the 
suffix  ville.  Nor  did  the  Old  Colony  catch  a 
shower  of  Romes,  Scipios,  Uticas,  Ithacas  and 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  103 

other  classic  cognomens.  Mainly  therefore,  on 
the  Cape  and  around  Plymouth,  we  find  In- 
dian and  English  names  with  here  and  there 
a  memorial  of  some  name  of  honor  in  the 
church  or  in  civil  life. 

In  the  roll  of  towns,  English  adoptions  are 
far  in  the  majority.  Off  the  Cape  we  have 
Duxbury,  Kingston,  Plymouth,  Halifax, 
Wareham  and  Middleboro.  One  would  not 
like  to  think  of  Plymouth  as  Saint  John  Har- 
bor, Port  of  Cape  St.  Louis,  or  Crane  Bay. 

On  the  Cape  are  the  English  place  names. 
Sandwich,  Falmouth,  Barnstable,  Yarmouth, 
Harwich,  Eastham  and  Truro.  Barnstable 
gets  its  name  from  Barnstable,  a  market  town 
of  Devonshire.  The  latter  is  on  a  small  navi- 
gable river  a  few  miles  from  the  sea  and  is 
thought  to  be  the  port  from  which  some  early 
settlers  in  the  Cape  town  sailed.  Regarding 
Yarmouth,  Swift,  its  historian,  thinks  the 
town  may  have  been  named  from  old  Yar- 
mouth of  England,  not  because  any  group  of 
colonists  came  from  it,  but  because  it  was 
known  to  the  settlers  as  the  chief  English  port 
for  Holland. 

The  elder  Truro  is  a  very  ancient  city,  not 
far  from  Falmouth  in  Cornwall.  The  Cape 
Truro  was  first  Pamet,  then  Dangerfield,  and 
became  Truro  in  1709.    The  historian  of  the 


104  Cape  Cod 

town,  though  his  studies  produced  a  large  vol- 
ume, does  not  appear  to  have  found  the  con- 
nection, if  any,  between  the  old  town  and  the 
Cape  Truro. 

Chatham  bears  its  name  in  honor  of  William 
Pitt,  the  Earl  of  Chatham.  The  newcomer  on 
the  Cape  learns  after  a  time  not  to  scant  the 
second  syllable,  but  to  pronounce  with  the 
accent  about  equally  distributed  and  the  vowel 
brought  out  in  both  parts — Chat-ham — the 
same  usage  applying  to  Eastham.  Some  old 
Cape  people  seem  to  hit  the  second  syllable  a 
little  harder  than  the  first,  but  on  the  other 
hand,  the  trainmen,  who  may  not  be  natives, 
are  likely  to  call — Chatum. 

In  aboriginal  days,  the  region  of  Falmouth 
was  Succanesset,  Yarmouth  was  Nobscusset, 
Chatham  was  Monamoyick  and  Eastham  was 
Nauset.  Mashpee  is  the  only  Indian  name 
which  has  been  retained  by  a  town  on  the 
Cape.  Three  towns  do  honor,  in  their  names, 
to  early  settlers.  One  of  these  is  the  first  town 
to  be  crossed  as  we  go  upon  the  Cape,  the 
youngest  member  of  the  family  in  Barnstable 
County,  the  town  of  Bourne.  An  ancient  and 
honorable  family  went  to  the  Old  Testament 
and  called  various  of  its  offspring,  Jonathan, 
Bathsheba  and  Shearjashub,  but  the  town 
name  was  given  in  special  honor  of  the  saintly 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  105 

friend  of  the  Indians,  Richard  Bourne.  Den- 
nis recalls  the  Reverend  Josiah  Dennis,  for 
thirty-seven  years  minister ;  and  Brewster  car- 
ries down  the  name  of  Elder  William  Brewster 
of  Scrooby,  Leyden  and  Plymouth. 

Provincetown  is  the  Town  of  the  Province 
lands.  The  name  of  Wellfleet  is  traced,  per- 
haps conjecturally,  to  Whale  fleet ,  and  Orleans 
is  the  only  town  in  the  county  which  has  what 
may  be  called  an  alien  designation.  It  was 
the  good  fame  of  the  democratic  Duke  of 
Orleans,  which,  in  1797,  when  the  town  was 
set  ofE  from  Eastham,  led  to  the  choice  of  the 
name.  A  part  of  Wellfleet  is  said  to  have 
acquired  the  name  Billingsgate,  because  of  the 
planting  of  oysters  in  the  neighborhood.  It 
was  not  altogether  fanciful  to  adopt  the  name 
of  the  great  fish  market  of  London.  It  still 
appears  on  the  map  attached  to  the  island  and 
the  light  at  the  outer  opening  of  the  harbor. 

Most  of  the  towns  have  in  addition  to  their 
principal  village,  their  satellite  Easts  and 
Wests,  Norths  and  Souths,  but  they  are  not 
located  so  far  as  one  can  see,  with  much  re- 
gard to  the  points  of  the  compass,  at  least  in 
several  of  the  towns.  Other  village  names 
show  a  good  deal  of  variety  in  their  origin. 
Indian  names  abound  in  Bourne  and  Fal- 
mouth, as  Pocasset,  Cataumet  and  Waquoit. 


N/ 


io6  Cape  Cod 

The  Indian  chief,  whose  name  is  variously 
spelled,  and  may  be  something  like  lyanough, 
comes  out  in  two  village  names  of  the  town  of 
Barnstable  as  Wianno  and  Hyannis. 

Marston*s  Mills  adds  one  to  the  list  of  old 
settlers'  names  and  some  villages  have  descrip- 
tive designations,  as  in  Forest  Dale  in  Sand- 
wich and  Osterville — Oysterville — in  Barn- 
stable. According  to  Freeman,  Grand  Island 
was  once  Oyster  Island  and  the  settlement  was 
Oyster  Island  village.  A  flag-bordered  lakelet 
in  North  Truro  gave  to  this  snug  village  the 
early  name  of  Pondsville.  A  hole,  being  a 
short  word  for  a  narrow  passage  swept  by 
runs  of  the  tide,  gives  us  appropriately  a  name 
for  one  of  the  Cape's  frequented  harbor  vil- 
lages, Woods  Hole. 

Unless  we  except  shore  forms  no  natural 
features  put  such  a  profuse  assortment  of 
names  on  the  map  as  the  lakes  and  ponds. 
Many  names  are  derived  from  their  size  and 
shape.  In  Great  South  Pond  in  Plymouth  we 
find  recorded  both  size  and  position.  There 
is  also  Great  Pond  in  Barnstable,  known  now 
to  the  tourist,  more  takingly  perhaps,  as  We- 
quaket.  Eastham  and  Wellfieet  each  has  its 
Great  Pond.  The  name  Long  Pond  solved  the 
naming  problem  in  all  parts  of  the  Old  Colony. 
Plymouth  has  its  example,  likewise  Falmouth, 


■^^•^^ 


A    PROVINCETOWN    ALLEY 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  107 

drawing  its  water  supply  from  the  lake  that 
stretches  its  waters  and  its  bordering  slopes 
far  back  into  the  great  Falmouth  moraine. 
The  Long  Pond  which  is  the  largest  fresh 
water  on  the  Cape  lies  between  Brewster  and 
Harwich.  Wellfieet  has  two  Long  Ponds, 
though  neither  deserves  the  name,  and  Barn- 
stable, Bourne  and  Yarmouth  have  each  one. 

A  triple  group  of  beautiful  kettle-hole  waters 
gives  us  Triangle,  from  its  shape,  Lawrence, 
from  an  old  family,  and  Spectacle  Pond,  a 
descriptive  name.  Falmouth  also  has  a  Spec- 
tacle Pond.  One  of  the  Wellfieet  Long  Ponds 
is  grouped  with  five  others  showing  a  sufficient 
assortment  of  naming  motives — Gull,  Higgins, 
Herring,  Newcomb,  and  Round  Ponds. 

Herring  ponds,  drained  each  by  a  Herring 
River,  we  find  in  Wellfieet  and  Eastham. 
Harwich  has  its  Herring  River,  and  Monumet 
River  in  Bourne  drains  Great  and  Little  Her- 
ring Ponds  in  Plymouth.  Eel  River  in  the 
latter  town  recalls  one  safeguard  of  the  May- 
flower people,  who  could,  if  need  be,  save 
themselves  from  starvation  by  the  suggested 
kind  of  fishing. 

Remembering  the  hundreds  of  lakes  little 
and  large  within  the  Old  Colony  there  is  no 
need  for  wonder  that  the  vocabulary  of  the 
pioneers  was  sometimes  taxed,  that  names 


io8  Cape  Cod 

were  duplicated  and  that  some  are  highly  fan- 
ciful. The  marsh  at  the  border,  the  water, 
transparent  or  turbid,  the  bird  that  flew  over, 
the  lily  pad  on  the  surface,  the  oyster  in  the 
landlocked  bay — all  offered  themselves  to  the 
settler  or  the  surveyor  and  he  placed  them  in 
his  memory  or  on  his  map.  If  resources  failed, 
he  could  call  a  water  great,  or  long,  or  round 
when  it  was  none  of  these,  or  fall  back  upon 
Lawrence,  or  Jenkins,  Hinckley,  Wakeby, 
Lewis  or  Shiverick.  The  Cape  has  at  least 
four  Flax  Ponds,  three  of  them  inside  a  five- 
mile  radius. 

Remembering  Oneida,  Seneca,  Cayuga,  and 
Canandaigua  of  the  New  York  lakes,  or  listen- 
ing to  gently  flowing  waters  in  Genesee,  Sus- 
quehanna, Chenango,  and  Unadilla,  the  waters 
of  the  Old  Colony  are  poor  in  Indian  names 
though  we  do  find  Cotuit,  Santuit,  Mashpee, 
Ashtmiet  and  Coonemossett.  If  we  go  to  the 
shore  features,  the  Indian  heritage  is  larger — 
Saquish,  Manomet,  Scusset,  Nobscusset, 
Namskaket,  Pamet,  Monomoy,  Quamquisset, 
Cataumet  and  Wenaumet. 

Shoot  Flying  Hill  is  now  no  doubt  more 
sought  for  views  of  Bay  and  Sound,  than  for 
the  destruction  of  migrant  wild  fowl.  Clay 
Pounds,  used  sometimes  of  the  recessed  cliffs 
by  Highland  Light,  has  been  interpreted  as 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  109 

derived  from  the  pounding  of  wrecks  upon  the 
hard  sea  banks,  but  this  sounds  rather  mythi- 
cal and  sends  the  curious  on  further  inquiry. 
Not  many  hills  have  received  a  name;  but  a 
few  have  become  landmarks — Manomet  and 
Telegraph  Hill  in  Plymouth,  Bourne's  Hill  in 
Sandwich,  German's  Hill  in  Yarmouth  and 
Scargo  Hill  in  Dennis. 

Old  Colony  life  planted  itself  on  the  sea- 
border  and  there  it  has  remained.  South  of 
Marshfield  are  Duxbury,  Kingston,  and  Plym- 
outh, all  reached  by  the  tides.  From  Plym- 
outh along  the  shore  to  Sagamore,  the  country 
is  a  wilderness,  holding  a  few  ancient  cottages 
and  invaded  here  and  there  by  summer  folk. 
All  the  back  part  of  Plymouth  Town,  save 
for  scattered  hamlets  and  cranberry  bogs,  is 
forest  country. 

The  upper  Cape  has  a  fringe  of  settlements 
on  all  its  shores.  We  go  by  easy  reaches  from 
Sagamore  to  Sandwich  and  West  Barnstable 
and  then  there  is  an  almost  continuous  village 
from  Barnstable  through  Yarmouth  Port,  Yar- 
mouth and  Dennis  to  Brewster.  The  Buzzards 
Bay  shore  has  an  unbroken  panorama  of  vil- 
lages and  cottage  grounds,  from  Buzzards  Bay 
to  Woods  Hole,  and  a  score  of  villages  line  the 
south  shore,  for  forty  miles  from  Woods  Hole 
to  Chatham.     More  commonly  the  latter  are 


no  Cape  Cod 

not  directly  on  outer  shores,  but  at  the  inner 
end  of  tidal  bays  as  at  East  Falmouth,  Wa- 
quoit,  Marston's  Mills,  and  Hyannis.  There 
is  scarcely  a  break  in  the  long  grouping  of  sum- 
mer homes  and  village  streets,  from  Osterville 
to  Chatham. 

Between  the  Bay  chain  of  settlements  and 
these  on  the  Sound,  is  a  wilderness  which  in- 
cludes the  simimits  and  south  slopes  of  the 
great  moraine  and  the  wide  inner  belt  of  the 
outwash  plain.  One  drives  from  Falmouth  to 
Sandwich  through  more  than  a  dozen  miles  of 
almost  unbroken  forest.  Here  are  the  oaks 
and  pines  framing  in  the  lakes,  a  country  that 
is  now  invaded  more  and  more  by  the  Portu- 
guese gardener,  the  farms  of  a  few  opulent 
agriculturists  and  the  homes  and  camps  of 
those  who  feel  no  compelling  bent  toward  salt 
water. 

On  the  lower  Cape  the  villages  are  either  in 
the  interior  or  on  the  shores  of  Cape  Cod  Bay. 
There  is  escape  from  the  severity  of  oceanic 
storms  but  in  no  case  is  there  a  separation  from 
tidal  waters.  Orleans  is  on  Town  Cove,  but 
is  nearer  to  the  Bay  than  to  the  ocean.  Well- 
fleet  at  the  head  of  its  spacious  harbor  waters, 
is  midway  between  the  Bay  and  the  Atlantic. 
The  Truros  open  to  the  west  shore  and  Prov- 
incetown  is  on  the  protected  inner  strand. 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  m 

Chatham  is  the  only  village  on  the  ocean  side 
of  the  Cape.  From  Chatham  to  Province- 
town,  a  distance  of  more  than  forty  miles 
following  the  beach,  the  shore  wilderness  is 
broken  only  by  lights,  life-guard  stations  and 
a  few  summer  cottages.  One  could  follow 
Thoreau's  track  from  Nauset  northward,  and 
only  at  intervals  of  several  miles  find  inter- 
rupted the  solitudes  which  he  describes. 

Every  village,  after  the  manner  of  Plym- 
outh, will  yield  reasons  why  a  particular  site 
was  early  chosen  as  a  center  of  homes.  Set- 
tlers want  a  decently  good  soil,  they  want 
water,  and  trees  and  protection  from  storms. 
And  in  a  maritime  neighborhood,  they  want 
the  easiest  access  to  the  sea.  Thus  Sandwich 
grew  by  a  small  stream,  whose  water  invited 
the  herring  and  turned  the  first  millwheel  on 
Cape  Cod.  This  stream  flows  down  through  a 
snug  recess  in  the  northern  border  of  the  mo- 
raine. The  homes  are  among  the  hills  and 
the  business  part  reached  down  to  the  old 
harbor  in  the  marshes.  The  comely  old  homes, 
once  deeply  secluded  now  bordered  by  the 
busy  highway  from  Boston,  stand  pocketed 
between  the  main  masses  of  the  moraine  on 
the  south,  and  ridges  of  recessional  moraine 
that  rise  steeply  at  the  north. 

The  villages  of  Barnstable,  Yarmouth  Port 


112  Cape  Cod 

and  Yarmouth  are  on  the  borders  of  Barn- 
stable Bay,  and  their  sites  were  no  doubt 
chosen  for  harbor  protection,  favorable  condi- 
tions for  fishing  and  clamming,  soils  better 
than  the  average  on  the  Cape,  and  for  those 
seemingly  endless  stretches  of  the  Great 
Marshes,  which  in  old  times  supplied  large 
gatherings  of  salt  hay.  The  Brewster s  and  the 
northern  Dennises  stand  within  easy  distances 
of  the  north  shore  on  the  route  which  must 
always  have  been  traced  in  going  down  the 
Cape  from  Plymouth  or  Boston. 

The  compelling  condition  of  concentration 
at  Woods  Hole  is  its  harborage.  Always  open 
to  whalers  and  fishermen,  it  is  the  natural 
calling  point  between  New  Bedford  and  the 
outer  islands,  and  in  these  days  of  the  railway 
and  the  motor  car,  it  transfers  a  multitude 
between  land  and  sea  during  the  summer  pe- 
riod, and  has  charms  of  its  own,  waters,  pass- 
ing ships,  the  views  of  the  Vineyard  shore,  and 
backgrounds  of  glorious  hill  and  forest. 

Across  these  hills  and  on  the  other  side  of 
the  forest  is  Falmouth.  The  early  settlers 
landing  between  Oyster  and  Fresh  Ponds, 
went  about  a  mile  back  from  the  shore  and 
built  their  permanent  homes  on  the  fertile 
plain  at  the  eastern  base  of  the  moraine.  At 
the  railway  station  one  is  at  the  foot  of  the 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  113 

morainic  hills  and  on  the  western  edge  of  the 
plain.  From  the  main  street  one  may  go 
through  a  churchyard  and  find  himself  at  the 
edge  of  Fresh  Pond,  looking  toward  the  sea. 
On  the  other  side,  in  the  rear  of  the  post  office, 
is  another  charming  fresh  water,  lying  also 
behind  the  Town  Hall  and  on  the  edge  of  the 
lawns  where  the  Public  Library  stands.  It 
took  no  special  wisdom  to  locate  Falmouth — 
the  men  of  1660  followed  the  index  finger  of 
nature. 

Cotuit,  Hyannis,  Chatham,  and  indeed  all 
the  south-shore  villages  are  on  the  borders  of 
protected  waters,  inviting  fishing  and  trade  in 
the  old  days  and  open  to  summer  homes  and 
summer  sailing  in  these  times.  In  the  shallow 
bays,  oystering,  clamming,  and  scalloping,  if 
they  do  not  make  many  rich,  at  least  save  the 
traditions  of  old  time,  and  avert  from  the  sirni- 
mer  world  the  unthinkable  loss  of  chowders, 
steamed  clams,  and  broiled  lobster. 

If  one  enters  Nauset  Harbor  and  makes  a 
right-angle  turn  into  Town  Cove,  he  will  ar- 
rive, after  sailing  about  five  miles,  at  the  head 
of  the  Cove  and  find  straggling  about  this  end 
shore  the  village  of  Orleans.  The  town  bor- 
ders both  bay  and  ocean,  but  the  village  is 
more  secluded  from  the  ocean  than  any  of  its 
sister  communities  on  the  Cape.     Like  Fal- 


114  Cape  Cod 

mouth,  it  is  one  of  those  sites  which  need  no 
explanation,  but  for  the  simple  fact  that  the 
greater  part,  in  the  realm  of  geography  at 
least,  see  but  do  not  perceive. 

The  straggling  little  Truro  is  about  equal- 
ly distant  from  the  inner  and  outer  shores, 
in  the  well-shielded  Pamet  valley,  setting  its 
churches,  however,  in  utterly  exposed  places 
on  the  high  hills.  One  can  hardly  think  these 
windy  hilltops  were  chosen  to  compel  walking 
exercise  on  Sunday  morning,  for  dearth  of  ex- 
ercise in  the  older  days  of  the  Cape  is  unim- 
aginable. The  churches  were  beacons,  per- 
haps as  an  afterthought,  and  possibly  were 
perched  high  to  be  as  near  heaven  as  was 
possible. 

North  Truro,  however,  planted  its  churches 
like  its  homes,  in  a  valley.  Here  valleys  join 
and  the  snug  little  place  is  in  a  kind  of  bowl, 
not  far  from  the  Bay  shore,  bordering  the 
small  pond,  from  which,  as  we  suppose,  it  was 
once  known  as  Pond  Village. 

Going  down  the  Cape  one  passes  the  great 
shops  and  new-looking  houses  of  Sagamore, 
and  if  he  is  making  his  first  exploration  he  is 
wondering  what  can  lie  behind  so  prosaic  a 
doorway,  if  he  has  come  all  this  way  for  forges, 
chimneys,  sidings  jammed  with  newly  com- 
pleted freight  cars,  and  dreary  wastes  spread 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  115 

with  dredgings  from  the  Canal  and  still  star- 
ing verdureless  at  the  traveler.  In  a  few  min- 
utes he  finds  himself  in  ancient  Sandwich,  and 
what  he  thinks  of  that  old  town  will  hinge 
upon  the  mode  of  his  going.  Two  visions  were 
never  so  opposite  as  those  that  greet  the  eye 
through  the  Pullman  window,  and  in  the 
motor  car. 

At  the  railroad  end  of  Sandwich,  round  brick 
smokestacks  of  huge  size  rise  over  the  ancient 
glass  factory.  The  walls  are  falling  out  in 
places,  and  one  part  of  the  decaying  structure 
does  duty  as  a  storage  place  for  fish.  Beyond 
the  ruins  are  yards  full  of  rubbish,  and  tall 
with  weeds,  stretching  down  to  a  channel,  an 
empty  trench  between  walls  of  mud  at  low 
tide,  leading  its  sinuous  way  across  wide  salt 
marshes,  and  past  a  ridge  of  dunes  to  the 
waters  of  the  Bay.  In  the  environs  are  small 
dwellings,  some  of  them  rejuvenated  after  long 
dilapidation  and  occupied  by  populous  fami- 
lies of  Italians,  whose  men  folk  go  every  day 
to  work  in  the  shops  of  Sagamore. 

The  real  New  England  town,  of  mansions 
and  white  paint,  of  churches  and  homes,  of  the 
town  hall  and  the  public  monimients,  gathers 
at  the  foot  of  the  mill  pond  and  along  the  state 
road  both  east  and  west.  Here  under  shade 
so  densely  arched  as  to  be  almost  twilight, 


ii6  Cape  Cod 

live  the  descendants  of  the  ancient  settlers,  in 
an  atmosphere  of  repose  which  seems  hardly 
disturbed  by  the  cars  that  ceaselessly  pass  in 
the  Slimmer  months.  In  the  winter,  silence 
is  pretty  well  maintained  in  Sandwich,  save 
when  an  occasional  Old  Colony  train  rumbles 
by  or  a  steam  whistle  shrieks  on  the  Bay  or 
along  the  Canal. 

How  general  it  is  in  New  England,  we  do  not 
know,  but  on  the  Cape,  if  a  query  takes  one 
to  the  town  hall,  there  will  almost  certainly 
be  foimd  one,  two,  or  three  of  the  elder  citi- 
zens, men  of  the  ancient  lineage,  of  sound  in- 
telligence and  community  loyalty,  carrying  on 
the  town  business.  And  information  is  not 
the  only  good  that  the  visitor  brings  away  from 
such  interviews.  Sandwich  makes  no  break 
in  this  rule,  maintaining  a  dignity  which,  in 
spite  of  its  dearth  of  business,  is  worthy  of  the 
oldest  town  in  the  coimty. 

Here  and  there  is  found  a  mill  pond  or  reser- 
voir to  which  nature  and  a  discreet  art  have 
given  all  the  possible  beauty  of  a  natural  lake. 
Such  is  the  mill  pond  in  Sandwich.  In  truth 
the  water  had  a  little  natural  pond  as  the  nu- 
cleus of  it,  but  this  does  not  lessen  the  marvel. 
At  the  lower  end  stood  the  little  old  mill  of 
former  years.  On  the  outlet  is  a  fish  way  for 
the  omnipresent  herring.     Around  the  lower 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  117 

parts  and  on  both  sides  for  a  distance  are 
modest  streets  and  old  homes  and  the  upper 
parts  wind  back  among  the  hills. 

The  more  ancient  of  the  two  cemeteries  is 
on  a  green  promontory  which  sets  out  into  the 
pond.  Here  the  old  stones  bear  such  names  as 
Freeman,  Faimce,  Bourne,  Bodfish  and  Nye. 
Sunlight,  trees,  children  frolicking  in  the  wa- 
ter, a  canoe  or  two,  greenery  and  reflections 
on  the  other  side,  and  old  marbles  and  slates — 
if  there  be  such  a  thing  as  perfect  resting 
places  for  the  dead,  the  Cape  has  some  of  them 
and  this  is  one. 

Southward  from  Sandwich  the  road  leads  up 
into  the  moraine  and  past  Bourne  Hill  to  For- 
est Dale,  Wakeby  and  Farmersville.  So  small 
are  these  hamlets  that  one  rather  needs  infor- 
mation that  he  has  arrived,  but  he  is  in  the 
lake  coimtry  of  Peter's  Pond,  of  Mashpee, 
Spectacle,  Lawrence  and  Triangle;  and  to 
reach  it  he  has  come  through  miles  of  forest 
country  unbroken  by  a  single  shack  or  a  soli- 
tary garden  plot. 

Across  the  railroad  and  not  far  from  the 
village  is  Town  Neck,  a  big  and  rambling  hill 
given  to  common  pasture  in  the  old  days.  It 
is  innocent  of  trees  save  a  few  small  specimens 
on  the  slope  facing  the  town,  and  where  the 
descendants  of  ancient  cattle  have  not  cropped 


ii8  Cape  Cod 

the  grass,  are  growths  of  bayberry,  low  black- 
berry, and  wild  rose.  If,  as  some  say,  Sand- 
wich looks  like  an  old  English  village,  this  is 
the  place  to  see  it  so.  There  is  the  slender 
steeple  of  the  Congregational  church,  rising 
against  the  forest  slopes  of  the  northern  face 
of  the  moraine,  with  Bourne  Hill  at  the  left, 
showing  its  flat-arched  curve  on  the  horizon. 

The  desolation  of  the  old  glass  factory  and 
its  big  brick  stacks  loses  its  ugliness  at  this 
distance  and  recalls  the  activity  and  fame  of 
former  generations.  On  the  east  are  the 
marshes  of  Dock  Creek  and  Old  Harbor  Creek, 
fronted  along  the  shore  by  a  chain  of  dunes. 
Beyond  the  marshes  is  Spring  Hill  and  yet 
farther  east,  beginning  four  miles  away,  is  the 
long-extended  group  of  hills  known  as  Scorton 
Neck.  All  these  heights.  Town  Neck,  Spring 
Hill  and  Scorton  Neck,  are  moraines  of  reces- 
sion, leaving  valleys  southward  in  which  we 
find  the  highway  and  the  railway. 

Northwest  from  Town  Neck  is  the  northern 
opening  of  the  canal,  with  a  long  breakwater 
reaching  into  the  Bay  on  the  northwest  side 
of  the  channel.  Then  comes  Scusset  Beach 
and  the  great  cliffs  that  stretch  off  toward 
Plymouth,  with  Manomet  in  the  distance. 
The  morainic  ridge  from  Manomet  south  past 
Boumedale  rises  commandingly  onthehorizon. 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  119 

Not  all  the  lore  of  Sandwich  is  in  the  town 
hall.  Along  the  highway  came  the  grandson 
of  "Johnny  Trout,"  Daniel  Webster's  guide 
and  friend  when  he  dropped  his  burdens  and 
turned  to  the  black  bass  of  Mashpee  and  the 
trout  of  the  Cape  streams.  Not  far  away  the 
grandson  was  bom,  for  Webster  and  his 
friends  had  given  the  old  fisherman  a  plot  of 
ground  on  which  he  built  a  home.  The  ceme- 
tery was  near — the  newer  one  in  the  west,  and 
to  it  the  old  man  that  he  is  now,  led  the  way. 
There  he  was  long  the  caretaker,  and  there  he 
brought  a  deed  by  which  he  handed  to  Joseph 
Jefferson  the  title  to  a  lot  which  had  been  his 
own,  but  unused.  The  actor's  answer  was, 
''They  wouldn't  let  me  live  in  Sandwich  but 
they  can't  prevent  my  burial  here."  Then 
Jefferson  sat  down  on  the  grass  with  Grover 
Cleveland  for  two  hours  of  old  friends'  talk. 

On  other  authority  than  the  old  man's,  it  is 
certain  that  the  actor  and  the  statesman  both 
wished  to  own  homes  in  Sandwich.  Over- 
thrifty  owners  of  property,  for  thrift  in  the 
narrow  sense  is  not  a  stranger  to  all  Cape  peo- 
ple, put  their  prices  so  far  up,  that  neither  son 
of  fame  would  buy,  and  thus  Sandwich  missed 
her  largest  opportunity.  As  for  Benjamin 
Denison,  the  grandson  of  "Johnny  Trout," 
reminiscent  of  old  sailing  days  in  Singapore, 


I20  Cape  Cod 

Batavia,  and  Melbourne,  caretaker  and  friend 
of  the  great,  may  he  yet,  a  "  Cape  Cod  type," 
as  nearly  as  any,  beguile  many  a  stroller  by 
the  wayside  in  Sandwich. 

This  ancient  town  has  its  summer  people, 
but  they  seem  to  be  her  own  sons,  the  mansions 
are  all  staid  and  old — no  great  hotels  and  pri- 
vate palaces  of  the  newer  architecture — no 
estates  covering  wide  acres  or  even  square 
miles  of  the  Cape's  territory — no  trespass 
signs — nothing  to  raise  a  fear  that  old  Barn- 
stable County  is  losing  its  democratic  equality 
of  feeling  and  its  simple  neighborly  ways. 

Barnstable  is  neighbor  on  the  east — East 
Sandwich,  West  Barnstable,  Barnstable — 
these  are  the  calls  on  the  train.  By  the  plain- 
est of  cotmtry  railway  stations,  almost  on  the 
railway  track,  to  a  modest  ancestral  home, 
comes  a  distinguished  Harvard  Professor  in 
the  summer,  to  rest  himself  with  Indian  lore, 
eat  his  summer  apples,  look  out  on  Great 
Marshes  and  Sandy  Neck,  and  show  forth  the 
eternal  loyalty  of  the  Cape's  sons. 

You  go  down  a  little  hill,  three  minutes,  and 
you  are  on  Barnstable's  main — we  might  al- 
most say  only — street.  You  look  up  and 
down,  you  are  looking  for  the  business  part  of 
the  village  and  while  you  are  looking  you  have 
gone  through  it  unaware.    Where  you  inter- 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  121 

sect  this  one  street  you  find  all  the  essentials 
of  a  county  seat.  Here  is  an  old  courthouse 
of  solid  stone,  with  low  and  narrow  halls,  ap- 
propriate conductors  to  the  not  much  popu- 
lated jail  that  is  behind  the  seat  of  justice.  A 
few  steps  westward  is  the  town  hall,  of  wood, 
one-storied  and  new.  Between  the  town  and 
the  county  building  is  an  old  style  single- 
storied  country  lawyer's  office,  and  across  the 
way  is  an  inn.  It  is  all  there  within  a  stone's 
throw. 

Go  in  one  direction  and  if  you  go  far  enough 
you  will  find  the  Post  Office  and  the  old  custom 
house.  It  is  all  one  building  and  on  a  hill,  but 
the  custom  house  is  to  be  given  over  appro- 
priately to  be  a  home  for  local  history.  Across 
the  road  is  the  old  first  church  and  around 
are  the  gravestones  of  the  fathers.  Some  of 
the  more  weathered  slabs — being  moimted  in 
a  horizontal  position,  they  have  weathered 
rapidly — have  been  recently  topped  with  new- 
ly inscribed  stones,  put  there  by  loyal  de- 
scendants to  keep  legible  the  record  of  their 
fathers. 

Go  in  the  other  direction,  westward,  and  if 
you  go  far  enough,  you  will  find  the  town 
pump,  the  Episcopal  Church  and  the  school- 
house.  Both  ways,  east  and  west,  walking 
until  you  are  weary,  there  are  lovely  homes. 


122  Cape  Cod 

At  one  extremity,  if  you  can  find  such  a  thing 
in  Barnstable  village,  is  the  Barnstable  County 
Fairground,  where  late  in  August,  are  assem- 
bled the  farm  products,  domestic  handiwork, 
and,  most  important  of  all,  the  people  of  the 
Cape.  A  bit  of  vaudeville,  a  race  or  two,  and 
if  he  can  come,  the  Governor  of  Massachu- 
setts, make  the  event  complete,  and  the  Cape, 
from  Bourne  to  Provincetown,  goes  home 
satisfied. 

At  the  outer  end,  or  where  the  end  ought  to 
be,  is  a  well-kept  forest  nursery  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  Beyond  the  end,  where  one 
looks  off  toward  West  Barnstable,  there  is  a 
change — smaller  houses,  more  farming,  differ- 
ent people — it  is  Finn-land,  the  Cape's  prin- 
cipal colony  of  these  migrants  from  the  lake 
country  of  northern  Europe. 

In  front  of  Barnstable  is  the  harbor,  heading 
for  miles  of  tidal  channels  among  the  intermi- 
nable acres  of  the  Great  Marshes.  In  these 
are  many  groups  of  piles  once  driven  to  sup- 
port and  keep  from  the  soggy  ground  thou- 
sands of  tons  of  salt  hay.  Unoccupied  with 
stacks  to-day,  save  here  and  there,  these  use- 
less foundations  give  a  look  of  abandonment 
and  desolation.  Beyond  the  marshes  and  the 
harbor,  is  Sandy  Neck,  miles  of  it,  built  as  a 
rampart  beach  along  the  open  Bay,  and  sur- 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  123 

mounted  by  dunes,  here  bare,  there  covered 
with  forest. 

A  freezing  plant  and  a  small  dock  shed 
where  local  fishermen  bring  their  catches, 
these  and  a  few  cottages,  are  the  only  signs  of 
life  about  this  harbor,  save  on  the  east  where 
stands  Yarmouth  Port.  There  a  dredge  is 
opening  a  channel  towards  another  and  greater 
freezing  plant,  and  saves  these  waters  from 
utter  quietude. 

A  new  cranberry  bog  was  coming  into  being 
on  the  edge  of  the  harbor  and  close  to  the 
center  of  the  village.  A  part  of  it  had  been 
planted  and  had  seen  a  year's  growth,  the 
plants  still  small  and  standing  in  rows  about 
fifteen  inches  apart.  An  old  Finn  was  at  work 
alone,  removing  sand  from  the  adjoining  parts, 
to  secure  a  grade.  Interminable  looked  the 
job  with  a  single  wheelbarrow.  He  had  been 
in  this  country  thirty  years,  but  spoke  English 
villainously.  He  almost  resented  the  surmise 
that  an  engineer  must  have  helped  him  to  his 
grades.  And  the  owner  afterward  told  the 
writer  that  he  had  the  same  experience  with 
the  old  man,  who,  by  sighting  on  the  ground 
had  laid  out  last  year's  section  of  the  bog  with 
but  infinitesimal  error.  Good  English  or  bad, 
he  knew  the  change  in  the  conditions  of  living. 
Ten  cents  per  hour  formed  his  wage  when  he 


124  Cape  Cod 

came  to  America  and  **dot  vass  a  leetle  more 
better  what  feefty  seexty  cent  iss  now,"  said 
this  adopted  son  of  old  Barnstable. 

People  in  Barnstable?  Yes,  and  friendly  as 
in  all  Old  Colony  towns.  They  will  stop  their 
business  to  talk  politics,  local  history,  or  the- 
ology— leave  their  store  unattended  to  show 
you  their  wide-spreading  apple  trees,  their 
seven-foot  popcorn  and  their  nine-foot  field 
corn,  will  graciously  answer  your  questions 
and  direct  you  to  the  next  place  of  yoiu:  desire. 
And  if  you  visit  the  courthouse  you  are  sure 
to  meet  a  genial  greeting  from  the  County 
Clerk  of  long  service,  and  you  may  have  cheer- 
ful conversation  with  the  judge  of  the  court, 
and  greet  a  captain  or  two  from  Hyannis, 
Chatham,  Falmouth  or  Wellfleet. 

Here  in  Barnstable  in  1839,  the  two  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  the  founding  was  held, 
with  elaborate  ceremony.  Whatever  has  hap- 
pened to  other  towns,  Barnstable  has  more 
than  a  chance,  twenty  years  hence,  of  coming 
to  her  tercentenary  with  traditions  unimpaired 
and  her  straggling  main  street  keeping  un- 
spoiled the  look  of  past  generations. 

The  Town  of  Barnstable,  which  reaches 
across  the  Cape  and  straggles  along  both  Bay 
and  Sound,  is  said  to  have  fourteen  post  offices. 
Larger  than  the  parent  village  is  Hyannis,  on 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  125 

the  south  shore,  the  permanent  population 
being  not  far  below  two  thousand.  Like  every 
other  New  England  village,  it  has  a  broad 
main  street,  bordered  with  old  homes '  and 
heavily  shaded,  but  there  is  no  public  square. 
There  is  a  lesser  avenue  running  parallel  and 
there  are  a  few  cross-streets.  On  the  south 
edge  of  the  village  is  an  arm  of  the  great  Lewis 
Bay,  where  are  summer  cottages  and  good 
sailing  for  pleasure  boats,  and  the  only  serious 
occupations,  and  these  not  too  serious,  are 
clamming  and  scalloping. 

The  rather  aristocratic  annex  to  Hyannis  is 
Hyannis  Port,  a  place  of  beauty  on  the  hilly 
shore  a  couple  of  miles  to  the  southwest  where 
costly  mansions,  golf  and  boating  occupy  a 
comely  bit  of  the  south  shore.  The  railway, 
branching  from  the  main  line  at  Yarmouth, 
has  its  chief  station  on  the  main  street  and  a 
port  terminal  at  the  shore.  Apparently,  how- 
ever, this  marine  extension  is  useless,  for 
Hyannis  no  more  does  a  marine  trade. 

Whether  a  town  is  spoiled  or  not  by  simmier 
trade  depends  on  the  point  of  view.  The 
pockets  of  the  merchant  and  boarding-house 
keeper  give  one  answer,  the  aesthetic  feelings  or 
the  chafed  nerves  of  the  visitant  may  give 
another.  Be  it  as  it  may,  the  last  Fourth  of 
July  gave  a  census  of  nine  thousand  automo- 


126  Cape  Cod 

biles  passing  a  given  point  on  the  principal 
thoroughfare  of  Hyannis. 

Someone  in  our  hearing  spoke  of  "Robber 
Street."  Well  what  is  that?  The  west  end 
was  the  reply.  We  do  not  say  the  implication 
is  fair,  but  something  has  happened  in  the  old 
Cape  village.  There  one  can  find  Miss  X's 
or  Miss  Y's  or  Miss  Z's  gift  shop,  for  sweaters, 
yams,  baskets,  windmills  and  wind  vanes. 
There  too  are  bungalows  offering  suits,  cre- 
tonnes, rugs,  embroidery,  china,  glass,  an- 
tiques, statuary,  chairs,  and  chests  on  the  lawn 
in  front,  mahogany  and  brass,  quite  direct  no 
doubt  from  Boston  or  New  York — sideboards, 
highboys,  bureaus,  old  mirror  frames  without 
mirrors,  and  salesladies  who  do  not  in  the 
least  resemble  Cape  Cod. 

Motor  cars  are  standing  in  front,  some  of 
them  occupied  by  men  having  resignation  on 
their  faces.  In  front  of  a  small  bimgalow 
home,  another  gift  shop,  is  for  sale  a  pair  of 
andirons  five  feet  in  height,  which  surely  did 
not  come  out  of  any  Barnstable  or  Yarmouth 
ancient  sitting-room. 

There  are  low  cottages  and  high  houses  and 
in  some  back  gardens  are  higher  observation 
towers  to  bring  Lewis  Bay  or  Nantucket  Sound 
up  to  the  main  thoroughfare.  The  sign  of  the 
town  clerk  and  treasurer  is  posted  on  the  front 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  127 

of  a  comfortable  dwelling  house.  Farther 
along  is  an  old-style  lawyer's  office  and  sign 
in  a  back  yard.  A  coal  and  wood,  hay  and 
grain  office  is  in  a  dainty  bungalow  in  the 
rear  of  a  home.  Then  one  finds  a  real  Cape 
house,  story  and  a  half,  old  square  chimney, 
shingled  from  cornice  to  ground — it  refuses 
to  budge  in  its  modern  and  mingled  envi- 
ronment. 

If  one  wants  to  know  what  a  summer  on 
Cape  Cod  gives — it  offers  like  all  other  places 
of  resort  to  a  degree  what  the  visitor  carries 
to  it,  the  choice  is  an  open  one,  and  where 
there  is  one  shop  or  one  band  concert,  or  one 
palace  hotel,  there  are  leagues  of  surf,  miles  of 
cliff  and  sand  dune,  an  endless  wilderness  of 
forest,  lake,  and  moor,  the  unsullied  purity  of 
the  air,  and  the  limitless  sea. 

One  might  be  set  down  in  the  village  of 
Falmouth  and  not  know  for  a  little  time  that 
he  was  near  the  sea.  Indeed  Fresh  Pond  comes 
in  almost  to  the  principal  street,  but  one  would 
not  know  at  its  inner  end  that  it  was  an  old 
salt  bay,  having  now  a  narrow  artificial  outlet 
to  let  in  the  herring  in  their  annual  migration. 
There  is  no  great  landlocked  bay  as  at  Cotuit 
or  Hyannis,  and  no  waste  of  salt  meadow  as 
in  Sandwich  or  Barnstable.  A  mile  of  solid 
green  turf  however  leads  down  to  the  sandy 


128  Cape  Cod 

beach  on  Vineyard  Sound  and  the  cliffs  and 
crest  Hnes  of  Martha's  Vineyard  seem  close  at 
hand  across  the  seven  miles  of  water  that 
intervene. 

Many  disciples  of  ''the  old  man,"  looking 
over  that  water,  would  have  a  kindly  and  rev- 
erent thought,  recalling  that  often  in  the 
years,  that  master  teacher  of  earth  lore,  Na- 
thaniel Southgate  Shaler,  looked  out  over  the 
same  waters  and  saw  the  same  skyline  as  he 
went  to  his  simimer  rest  on  the  island. 

One  does  not  readily  think  of  Falmouth  as 
now  or  ever  a  place  for  sailors.  The  only  har- 
bor is  a  dredged  embayment,  known  before 
the  Government  deepened  it,  a  dozen  years 
ago,  as  Bowman's  Pond.  And  a  few  small 
yachts  comprise  the  usual  outfit  of  that 
comfortable  haven. 

Falmouth  is  old,  but  it  is  very  new — it  has 
the  village  green  and  the  elms  and  the  colonial 
houses  that  place  it  in  the  old  New  England 
class,  but  it  has  environed  itself  with  the  city 
and  like  the  city  it  is.  There  is  no  failing  to 
know  it  when  you  are  in  the  business  center, 
the  shops  crowd  together  and  are  spacious  and 
modern,  albeit  of  one  story,  and,  let  it  be 
added,  the  only  bank  in  Falmouth  village  is 
in  a  one-story  bungalow  addition  to  an  old 
dwelling.    Here,  in  the  middle  hour  of  a  sum- 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  129 

mer  morning,  solid  lines  of  motor  cars  await 
the  opening  of  the  post-office  windows. 

Falmouth,  however,  did  not  escape  the 
ocean  but  is  like  every  other  Cape  town  in  its 
history.  She  sent  out  her  whalers  and  her 
fishermen  from  Woods  Hole  or  New  Bedford, 
but  she  drew  the  profits  of  voyaging,  disci- 
plined her  young  men  to  the  waves  and  re- 
ceived her  ship  captains  home  to  honorable 
retirement  as  did  Barnstable,  Yarmouth  or 
Chatham.  To-day  one  need  not  look  far  to 
meet  the  gracious,  elderly  sons  and  daughters 
of  those  old  shipmasters  and  shipowners,  and 
they  will  receive  you  heartily  and  tell  you  to 
your  heart's  content  the  inherited  lore  of  the 
ocean. 

People  go  on  the  Cape  searching  for  types, 
and  here  they  may  find  them — but  not  of  the 
supposed  grammar-smashing,  close-fisted,  and 
profane  old  Cape  Codder,  dwelling  in  a  low, 
shingled  cottage,  in  rooms  that  are  never 
opened  to  the  ocean  and  air  and  are  innocent 
of  all  fui'niture  that  is  less  than  a  hundred 
years  old.  In  sober  truth  there  will  appear 
courteous  men  and  women,  speaking  English 
good  enough  for  all  daily  use,  living  in  two- 
story  houses,  mansions  often,  with  modem 
comfort,  prudent  and  decently  thrifty,  witty 
in  quiet,  unexpected  turns   of  thought  and 


130  Cape  Cod 

phrase,  people  not  to  be  patronized,  but  to  be 
respected  and  beloved  for  their  worth  and 
their  neighborly  ways. 

If  the  newcomer  in  Chatham  has  a  geograph- 
ic bent,  likes  to  keep  the  points  of  the  compass, 
and  have  a  mental  picture  of  the  plan  of  the 
streets  and  shores,  he  will  have  more  trouble 
than  in  any  other  village  of  the  Cape.  The 
layout  of  Chatham  is  as  rambling  as  in  Barn- 
stable or  Orleans  and  less  simple.  The  railway 
station,  the  new  post  office,  the  big  hotel,  the 
old  windmill,  the  wireless  plant,  and  the  light- 
house might  have  been  sown  broadcast  from 
a  giant  airplane,  so  promiscuously  are  they 
placed,  along  the  ocean  lagoons  and  around 
landlocked  tidal  bays. 

These  bays,  which  are  Oyster  Pond  and  Mill 
Pond,  are  in  kettle  holes  resulting  from  stag- 
nant blocks  of  ice,  that  were  such  frequent 
features  of  the  outwash  plain  when  it  was  in 
the  making,  indeed,  Chatham  seems  in  aimless 
fashion  to  straggle  around  Mill  Pond. 

Looking  on  the  map  one  might  expect  to 
look  out  from  Chatham  down  the  long  beach 
of  Monomoy,  but  beyond  Stage  Harbor  are 
grounds  of  some  height,  covered  by  woods  and 
shutting  off  the  view.  There  are  bluffs  at  the 
Hawthorne  Inn,  and  at  Twin  Lights  also, 
marking  an  earlier  stage  of  wave  erosion  in- 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  131 

shore.  Now  the  barrier  has  been  built  outside 
and  the  inclosed  lagoons  are  rapidly  silting  up. 
The  surf  on  Chatham  Bars  marks  the  shoal 
part  of  the  barrier.  In  some  future  time  here 
too  the  land  will  conquer  the  sea,  and  Chat- 
hamites  will  have  to  go  out  across  the  lagoon 
and  over  the  sands  of  the  barrier  beach  to  gain 
a  view  of  the  surf. 

An  inscription  at  Twin  Lights  says  that  the 
lights  were  four  himdred  feet  out  from  the 
present  cliffs  forty  years  ago.  Like  changes 
could  be  seen  at  Siasconset  on  the  Nantucket 
shore — indeed  stability  is  not  in  the  vocabu- 
lary of  these  sandy  shores  of  southeastern 
Massachusetts.  Near-by  is  a  tablet,  recording 
that  Pollock's  Rip  is  nine  miles  off  shore,  and 
that  there  the  Mayflower  turned  back  and 
abandoned  the  intention  to  settle  on  the  Jersey 
coast. 

On  the  remnants  of  the  old  plain,  down  in 
the  kettle-hole  basins,  inland  and  along  the  sea, 
uphill  and  downhill,  Chatham  has  its  physical 
individuality  among  the  Cape  villages,  though 
one  is  baffled  in  describing  it.  It  is  an  old 
town  dovetailed  with  new  things,  being  in  this 
more  in  resemblance  of  Falmouth,  and  Hyan- 
nis,  than  of  Sandwich,  Brewster  or  Wellfleet. 

There  are  low,  broad,  shingled  Cape  cot- 
tages in  plenty,  and  even  more  abound  the 


132  Cape  Cod 

more  pretending  homes  of  a  story  and  a  half 
or  two  stories,  with  siding  on  the  wall,  and 
heavy  cornices  and  corner  boards  which  might 
be  in  Hingham  or  Marblehead  or  any  other 
New  England  village.  The  fine  mansions  of 
the  old  shipping  masters  are  hardly  so  con- 
spicuous or  common  as  in  Yarmouth,  Fal- 
mouth or  Brewster. 

Almost  every  street  in  Chatham  is  solidly 
paved,  and  the  old  corner  town  of  the  Cape  is 
the  natural  goal  of  the  traveler  coming  up  the 
Cape  from  Provincetown,  or  skirting  the  south 
shore  from  Woods  Hole  and  Falmouth.  One 
misses  here  the  dense  shade  of  most  of  the 
upper  Cape  towns  but  finds  the  big  and 
spreading  ailanthus,  with  its  gray  bark  and 
silvery  foliage. 

There  is  a  fishing  plant  on  Stage  Harbor  and 
one  is  rather  glad  to  find  the  good  old  signs  of 
sailmaker  and  some  boat  repair  shops.  They 
save  the  salty  flavor  of  the  place  which  is  in 
some  need  of  saving,  for  the  signs  of  survival 
of  the  old  life  are  few.  It  must  be  confessed 
that  "antiques"  have  come  into  Chatham, 
along  with  the  ' '  Blue  Bunny  Shop, ' '  the  ' '  Rose 
Bower,"  the  "Tea  Barn"  and  "Free  Air." 

It  must  be  confessed  also  that  Chatham  has 
at  least  one  hotel  where  only  the  rich  or  the 
very  ambitious  could  be  expected  to  register, 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  133 

that  the  old  town  has  experienced  vast  in- 
creases in  its  tax  roll,  that  its  bread  comes  from 
the  city  rather  than  from  the  sea,  and  yet  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  to  pass  on  the  testimony 
of  a  town  officer,  himself  recalled  from  a  life  of 
many  years  in  the  interior,  to  spend  his  re- 
maining days  in  the  places  of  his  youth.  * '  The 
rich  here  are  very  democratic,"  he  said.  Let 
us  hope  he  spoke  the  truth,  for  the  fishing 
days  and  the  simple  days  are  fast  ntimbering, 
and  it  is  more  than  a  chance  that  the  mackerel 
and  the  lobster  for  which  you  go  to  its  very 
haunts,  have  come  down  from  Boston  on  the 
last  train. 

The  village  of  Orleans  was  around  the  head 
of  Town  Cove.  The  town  hall  was  there,  and 
the  undertaker  was  there  and  there  they  are 
still — and  the  latter  not  only  buries  the  dead 
but  chisels  the  memorial  slabs  that  are  set  up 
over  them.  In  recent  decades  the  village 
business  has  migrated  westward  and  gathered 
around  the  railway  station  in  wooden  shops 
big  and  little.  The  hotels  have  not  reached  the 
tourist  stage  of  development,  being  kept  in 
old  made-over  mansions  of  the  town.  The 
ever-present  public  library  keeps  its  watch  and 
does  its  quiet  service  between  the  old  and  the 
new,  on  a  triangular  park  at  the  intersection 
of  the  main  roads. 


134  Cape  Cod 

Growth  is  strong  and  liixiiriant  in  Orleans 
where  it  is  quite  possible  to  gather  ten  barrels 
of  apples  from  a  single  tree  and  whose  elms 
would  look  well  if  they  were  in  Andover  or 
Deerfield.  Not  very  far  north  of  Orleans, 
Thoreau  struck  out  on  the  bare  beaches  of 
Eastham  and  began  his  tale  of  wave  and  wind- 
born  sand,  and  of  wave  and  wind-beaten  peo- 
ple, which  left  unsaid  and  unimagined  the 
forests,  the  fields,  the  homes,  and  the  life  of 
the  upper  Cape. 

Three  elderly  men  sat  at  the  tables  and 
desks  in  the  Town  Hall,  in  safe  seclusion,  under 
dull  skies,  industriously  doing  the  town's 
business.  The  walls  of  this  old  office  were 
covered  with  books,  in  which  law  reports  were 
as  predominant  as  in  an  attorney's  office. 
Here  were  the  Acts  and  Resolves  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  Massachusetts  Bay,  the  Laws  and 
Resolves  of  Massachusetts  and  Massachusetts 
Public  Docimients  of  various  orders  and  de- 
scriptions. Here  was  the  essence  of  New  Eng- 
land, the  quality  of  the  Puritan,  the  survival 
of  the  Old  Colony.  The  venerable  town  clerk 
active  in  body  and  keen  in  mind,  with  playful 
wit,  at  four  score,  said  that  Orleans  has  for 
its  size  more  of  the  old  population  than  any 
other  town  on  the  Cape. 

Like  other  towns  in  Barnstable,  Orleans  col- 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  135 

lects  a  considerable  part  of  its  taxes  from  the 
summer  visitor  and  property  owner,  but  the 
quiet  old  place  seems  wholly  unspoiled.  There 
are  no  pretentious  estates,  no  mansions  hidden 
a  mile  in  the  woods  of  some  modern  manor, 
no  big  hotel . — may  the  writer  be  pardoned  if 
in  error — but  he  doesn't  think  there  is  a  golf 
course  in  the  town.  But  there  are  beginnings 
of  "development''  at  Tonset,  and  over  on 
Nauset  Harbor,  and  there  are  few  places  on 
the  Cape  that  have  more  splendid  possibilities, 
if  it  be  splendid  to  build  summer  colonies, 
than  the  high  and  rolling  ground  that  spans 
across  from  Town  Cove  to  the  Atlantic  shore. 
But  the  old  Orleans  is  here  yet,  and  the  man 
still  lives  in  Orleans  who  ran  the  first  train 
into  Provincetown. 

In  1 895  an  elderly  gentleman  came  back  to 
Wellfleet  after  an  absence  of  forty- three  years. 
He  had  thus  visited  the  old  home  in  1852,  a 
time  between  the  earlier  and  later  excursions 
of  Thoreau  on  the  Cape.  Great  changes  had 
come  in  Wellfleet  between  the  fifties  and  the 
nineties.  The  great  fleet  of  fishermen  had 
disappeared.  The  harbor  was  as  free  from  all 
signs  of  commercial  life  as  on  the  day  when  the 
Mayflower  shallop  passed  Billingsgate  in  1620. 
The  fishing  wharves  were  falling  into  decay, 
and  the  roofs  of  some  fishermen's  cottages  had 


136  Cape  Cod 

dropped  within  the  ruined  walls.  Instead  of 
the  simple  Cape  cottages,  English  and  Italian 
styles  had  come  in. 

In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  salt  plants 
and  salt-making  were  everywhere  about  Well- 
fleet.  There  were  eighty  sail  of  splendid  ves- 
sels of  the  old  type,  and  there  was  an  immense 
catching  of  mackerel.  Oysters  were  brought 
up  by  thousands  of  bushels  from  the  south  to 
be  planted  here.  All  these  industries  had  gone 
down  and  there  was  little  left  but  a  tidy  village 
living  comfortably  on  its  past. 

And  so  it  is  to-day.  Perhaps  no  other  Cape 
village  has  changed  less  in  the  past  generation 
than  Wellfleet.  The  harbor  is  still  there  and 
the  mud  fiats  at  low  tide.  The  houses  are  well 
painted  and  nobody  seems  to  be  poor.  Oysters 
and  clams  are  still  harvested  but  not  as  in  old 
times.  No  mansions  are  being  built  and  no 
estates  are  being  laid  out.  There  is  the  same 
background  of  salt  marsh  stretching  far  in- 
land and  the  same  beautiful  ponds  lie  undis- 
turbed in  square  miles  of  unbroken  forest. 
The  black  fish  are  still  sometimes  stranded  in 
the  neighboring  creeks,  and  the  motor  cars  go 
through  in  greater  numbers.  A  large  stimmer 
inn  resting  over  the  water  on  piles  has  been 
constructed,  but  otherwise  Wellfleet  sees  little 
change,  keeps  its  dignity,  and  might  perhaps 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  137 

be  envied  by  some  other  of  the  towns  of 
Barnstable. 

If  we  make  exception  of  Woods  Hole,  Prov- 
incetown  has  the  only  harbor  on  the  Cape  that 
keeps  much  significance  as  a  haven.  Its  prox- 
imity to  fishing  grounds  will  always  give  this 
industry  a  place  there  but  never  again  is  it 
likely  to  be  the  absorbing  occupation,  filling 
at  once  the  speech,  the  pockets  and  the  door- 
yards  of  its  inhabitants.  All  the  old  wharves 
save  one  show  plentiful  signs  of  dilapidation 
and  decay  and  the  tools  of  shipbuilders  and 
ship-repairers  are  rarely  heard  on  the  shore. 

The  harbor  will  always  be  used  by  ships.  It 
is  old  water  for  the  American  navy,  though 
gossip  says  war  ships  have  declined  to  anchor 
there  because  the  town  authorities  would  not 
let  the  Jackies  come  ashore  for  Sunday  base- 
ball. And  the  same  gossip  says  that  the  lead- 
ing Puritans  go  to  the  Provincetown  churches 
in  the  morning  and  take  joyful  auto  trips  in 
the  afternoon.  But  pleasure  will  always  lure 
the  summer  sailor  thither  and  storms  will 
drive  in  the  winter  craft. 

Provincetown  has  no  soil  to  count  for  real 
agriculture.  Tiny  patches  of  dooryard  or  gar- 
den may  be  covered  with  earth  brought  in  as 
ballast,  or  with  mould  cut  from  neighboring 
swamps  and  lake  borders,  but  the  town  must 


138  Cape  Cod 

subsist  off  the  sea,  and  upon  what  it  can  buy 
in  Boston  or  elsewhere.  There  is  no  back- 
ground for  the  farmer,  there  is  dearth  of  the 
primal  needs  of  existence  as  in  no  other  Old 
Colony  town. 

The  isolation  that  once  niled  here  has  been 
lost.  The  touch  with  the  continental  world 
behind  is,  it  must  be  said,  not  very  active  in 
the  winter,  but  two  modest  trains  crawling 
down  the  Cape  every  day  would  have  meant 
intimate  fellowship  in  the  days  of  old  Province- 
town,  even  as  old  as  Thoreau's  time,  when 
there  were  sand  roads,  and  no  sidewalks,  when 
the  sands  were  encouraged  to  blow  under  the 
houses  lest  they  should  lodge  around  them, 
when  the  dooryards  were  sands  and  the 
industries  were — cod. 

What  Provincetown  is  to-day  is  summed  up 
in  hard  roads,  one  sidewalk  because  there  is 
room  for  only  one,  motor  cars  dodging  and 
grazing  each  other  from  May  to  September, 
the  daily  boat  from  Boston,  Boston  and  New 
York  papers,  and  the  artist  colony. 

If  the  visitor  will  refuse  to  see  Provincetown 
in  two  hours,  he  will  find  that  it  is  not  all  on 
one  street,  that  there  are  front  and  rear  ave- 
nues and  cross-streets,  and  that  not  all  the 
homes  and  not  many  of  the  people  are 
** quaint."    The  resident  of  the  Cape  does  not 


Old  Colony  Names  and  Towns  139 

like  to  be  called  quaint,  for  he  and  his  Barn- 
stable County  are  just  parts  of  Massachusetts, 
of  New  England,  with  a  good  showing  of  the 
New  England  sort  of  dwelling  house  and  the 
average  Massachusetts  kind  of  intelligence. 
The  sea  may  have  made  him  in  some  things 
different,  but  he  is  not  queer,  he  is  not  a  type 
and  does  not  care  to  be  a  subject  for  even  the 
good-humored  comments  of  the  frequenter  of 
the  Hudson  Valley,  or  the  dweller  by  the 
Great  Lakes. 

Perhaps  the  artist  colony  is  unique,  or  at 
least  a  part  of  it.  One  might  see  men  and 
women,  more  of  the  latter,  of  all  ages,  with 
canvases  of  all  sizes,  seated  in  all  kinds  of 
places,  in  and  out  of  the  town,  on  the  shore 
and  lost  in  the  dunes,  or  marching  with  apron 
and  palette  up  the  street,  in  alley  ways,  back 
of  homes,  by  every  clump  of  hollyhocks,  al- 
ways at  their  task  or  on  the  way.  And  let  us 
add  gently  that  some  of  them  and  their  worthy 
and  distinguished  masters  do  uphold  the 
sacred  cause  of  art  and  add  to  ancient  Prov- 
incetown  what  we  would  not  see  her  lose. 

One  need  not  be  a  painter  to  appreciate  in 
true  measure  the  beauty  of  Provincetown  or 
the  glory  of  the  Province  lands  and  their  envi- 
roning sea.  See  the  long  curve  from  the  boat's 
deck  as  you  come  or  go,  pass  in  and  out  among 


140  Cape  Cod 

the  winding  and  narrow  streets,  or  ascend  the 
monument  by  its  easy  inclined  ways  and  sweep 
the  horizon,  the  Plymouth  shore,  the  cliffs  of 
Truro  and  Wellfleet,  the  great  fields  of  gray 
or  forested  dunes,  the  outer  shore — there  is  no 
panorama  quite  like  this,  though  mountain 
peaks  may  open  wider  vistas.  Or,  stand  at 
Highland  light,  when  the  sun  sets  on  the 
Mayflower  calling  place,  and  all  the  glories  of 
the  sky  enfold  the  old  town — see  this,  but  to 
describe  it,  that  you  will  not  essay  to  do. 

On  all  the  circuit  of  the  Bay,  Plymouth 
alone  might  be  in  some  danger  of  outgrowing 
its  old  life.  Yet  it  seems  not  likely  to  go  the 
way  of  New  Bedford  or  Fall  River,  where  in- 
dustry and  trade  assume  engulfing  propor- 
tions. Old  homes  and  historic  places  continue 
to  rule  the  life  and  color  the  atmosphere  of  the 
first  Pilgrim  settlement. 

New  England  has  enough  centers  of  indus- 
try and  it  is  worth  while,  if  it  may  be  so,  to 
leave  Plymouth  as  a  goal  of  pilgrimage,  a 
shrine  at  which  Americans  may  breathe  afresh 
the  bracing  air  of  the  ancient  courage  and 
simple  life  of  the  fathers. 


CHAPTER  V 

ON  THE  LAND 

The  primary  wish  of  the  early  colonists  was 
to  own  land  and  raise  crops.  Swift,  in  his  his- 
tory of  Chatham,  says  that  all  the  early  set- 
tlers were  farmers  and  they  used  the  sea  prod- 
ucts only  for  their  own  tables.  Too  much  has 
been  said  about  the  poverty  of  the  Cape  soils. 
Thoreau  has  unwittingly  fixed  the  notion  that 
the  surface  of  the  Cape  is  all  sand.  He  is 
perhaps  to  be  excused,  for  his  visits  were  lim- 
ited to  a  few  days;  he  dragged  toilingly  over 
sand  roads  and  he  tramped  mainly  on  the 
wind-swept  outer  zone.  Thoreau  supports  his 
assertion  by  referring  to  Dr.  Hitchcock,  the 
distinguished  geologist  of  Massachusetts,  as 
authority  for  saying  that  the  Cape  is  composed 
almost  entirely  of  sand. 

Without  doubt  Dr.  Hitchcock  got  the  im- 
pression of  a  desert,  but  even  he  knew  that 
there  was  "many  an  oasis,"  and  he  gives  his 
praise  to  the  ''pleasant  villages"  and  their 
obliging  and  intelligent  inhabitants.   Thoreau, 

141 


142  Cape  Cod 

it  may  in  all  justice  be  said,  was  not  the  first 
to  receive  and  give  out  distorted  impressions 
of  the  lands  of  Barnstable.  In  Letters  from 
an  American  Farmer,  written  by  a  Pennsyl- 
vanian  and  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1793, 
the  writer  thus  delivers  himself — "I  am  at  a 
loss  to  conceive  on  what  the  inhabitants  live, 
besides  clams,  oysters  and  fish,  their  piny 
lands  being  the  most  ungrateful  soil  in  the 
world."  The  traveler  then  makes  reference  to 
a  Cape  minister  whose  salary  was  fifty  pounds, 
together  with  a  gratuity  of  horseshoe  crabs, 
''with  which  this  primitive  priest  fertilizes  the 
land  of  his  glebe,  which  he  tills  himself,  for 
nothing  will  grow  on  the  hungry  soils  without 
the  assistance  of  this  extraordinary  manure." 
Within  two  years  a  writer  in  a  book  of  travel 
essays  on  New  England,  says  that  "trees  do 
not  flourish  on  the  Cape."  One  is  inclined  to 
think  that  he  must  have  come  by  steamboat 
from  Boston  to  Provincetown  and  that  he 
returned  by  the  same  route.  It  could  not  be 
that  he  ever  saw  the  splendid  elm  arches  of 
Orleans,  far  down  the  Cape  as  it  is,  or  of 
Brewster,  the  Yarmouths,  Sandwich,  Hyannis 
or  Falmouth,  and  he  could  not  have  been  in 
the  more  than  respectable  forests  that  would 
have  shaded  him  for  endless  miles  of  driving 
or  walking  on  the  great  moraines  and  their 


On  the  Land  i43 

frontal  plains.  Even  the  streets  of  Province- 
town  and  the  forests  on  its  dunes  are  answer 
enough  to  this  indictment  of  Cape  soil  and  the 
fine  forests  of  Wellfleet  are  big  enough  and 
high  enough  to  lose  the  touch-and-go  tourist 
in  their  wilds. 

Now  it  is  a  rather  old  notion,  holding  a  good 
bit  of  truth,  that  soil  that  will  grow  trees  will 
support  crops  more  or  less  well,  and  to  this 
rule  the  sea  corner  of  the  Bay  State  is  no  ex- 
ception. Winslow's  Relation  is  more  discrimi- 
nating than  the  writers  we  have  quoted,  for 
it  describes  the  soil  as  variable  in  places — 
mould,  clay,  and  mixed  sand.  This  old  chron- 
icler notes  the  lesser  yield  of  corn  than  in  Vir- 
ginia, and  adds  the  very  just  observation  that 
the  difference  is  due  to  the  hotter  climate  of 
the  latter  region.  The  com  is  *'set"  with  fish 
because  this  is  easier  than  to  clear  new  ground. 
The  writer  adds  that  the  field  had  to  be 
watched  at  night  for  fourteen  days  to  prevent 
wolves  from  digging  up  the  fish.  The  men 
take  turns  at  this  and  so,  ''it  is  not  much." 
Fishing,  says  the  author,  is  a  better  industry 
than  tobacco. 

So  it  appears  that  the  fathers  knew  much 
more  about  their  coimtry  than  most  of  the 
literary  describers  of  the  last  sixty  years. 
They  knew  the  limitations  and  the  goodness  of 


144  Cape  Cod 

their  soils,  what  they  would  produce,  and  that 
some  crops  could  be  better  raised  than  others. 

It  is  fair  to  say  that  much  deterioration  has 
taken  place  in  the  centuries,  and  in  this  fact 
lies  some  palliation  for  the  unintentional 
slanders  that  have  been  placed  on  the  Cape. 
The  thinness  of  some  soils  led  to  early  exhaus- 
tion, and  the  cutting  of  the  forests  opened 
many  tracts  to  destruction  of  their  fertility. 
Few  cattle  or  other  livestock  could  be  kept  and 
thus  fertilizers  were  lacking.  The  farmers  did 
the  best  they  could  with  marine  fertilizers, 
as  in  Truro,  where,  according  to  Freeman,  one 
king  crab  with  a  broken  shell  was  put  in  each 
hill  of  corn.  But  there  was  continuous  crop- 
ping, and  fish,  shells  and  seaweeds  could  not 
repair  the  injury.  In  some  places  too,  the 
removal  of  the  trees  gave  the  winds  the  oppor- 
tunity to  tear  up  the  soil-cover  and  dissipate  it. 

Much  com  was  raised  in  the  Old  Colony, 
even  as  far  down  as  narrow  and  storm-ridden 
Truro,  where  fifty  bushels  were  often  har- 
vested on  an  acre  of  grotmd,  and  fifteen  or 
twenty  bushels  of  wheat.  The  grain  filled  well 
but  the  com  was  described  as  ''low  of  stature,*' 
a  trait  which  belongs  to  apple  trees,  pines,  oaks, 
and  goldenrods  on  that  part  of  the  Cape.  It 
will  not  be  forgotten  that  Standish  and  his 
men  found  the  first  Pilgrim  stores  of  com  in 


On  the  Land  145 

Truro,  a  town  of  which  Freeman  says  that 
though  the  soils  are  poor,  the  com,  rye  and 
vegetables  nearly  suffice  for  the  population. 
This  record  was  made  less  than  seventy  years 
ago. 

The  Indians  raised  quantities  of  com  in 
Eastham  and  the  white  settlers  in  that  town 
produced  it  for  export.  From  one  to  three 
thousand  bushels  were  sold  from  the  town  in 
some  years.  Single  farms  raised  five  hundred 
bushels  of  grain  and  a  yield  of  eight  hundred 
is  credited  to  one.  Now  there  is  a  barren  tract 
of  seventeen  hundred  acres  on  the  west  side, 
with  hardly  a  particle  of  vegetable  mould, 
which  formerly  produced  wheat  and  other 
grains. 

Freeman  says  that  in  his  time  com  ran  from 
twenty-five  to  fifty  bushels  per  acre,  fifty  to 
one  hundred  being  exceptional  yields.  Onions, 
wheat  and  flax  were  formerly  raised,  these 
facts  being  from  the  account  of  the  town  of 
Barnstable.  Dwight  also  saw  in  that  town 
good  crops  of  maize,  rye  and  other  grains,  a 
good  deal  of  flax,  and  a  great  quantity  of 
onions.  Swift  in  his  history  of  Yarmouth  re- 
fers to  com,  rye,  barley,  wheat  and  vege- 
tables. Under  the  last  were  to  be  excepted 
potatoes,  which  came  in  later  than  the  others. 
Of  fruits  there  were  apples,  pears,  peaches  and 


146  Cape  Cod 

(how  suggestive  of  London  market  stalls) 
Kentish  cherries. 

Every  rambler  on  Cape  Cod,  if  he  rambled 
by  foot  and  not  by  gasoline,  has  found  fasci- 
nation in  the  low,  wide-spreading  apple  trees, 
planted  behind  hills  and  in  kettle  holes  and 
even  then  crouching  low  to  escape  the  winds 
and  holding  their  fair  and  juicy  fruit  where  one 
must  reach  down  to  it  and  even  lift  it  off  the 
groimd.  Thoreau  tells  interestingly  of  these 
dwarfish  trees,  which  after  years  of  growth, 
reached  the  stature  of  shrubs,  yet  bore  aston- 
ishing crops  of  fruit.  Wendell  Davis  in  his 
description  of  Sandwich  says  that  the  apple 
trees  do  not  attain  much  height  and  in  bleak 
situations  are  likely  to  decay  in  a  few  years. 
Some  writer,  referring  to  Orleans,  says  the 
greening,  a  low  tree,  succeeds  best.  ''Fruit 
trees  cannot  be  made  to  grow  within  a  mile  of 
the  ocean."  This  simply  is  not  true,  as  we 
may  see  well  enough  along  the  narrower  parts 
of  the  Cape.  Barely  a  mile  from  either  shore 
in  Truro  is  the  small  orchard,  which  took  high 
prizes  over  hundreds  of  competitors  in  one  of 
the  Bay  State's  greatest  fairs. 

Nor  are  we  to  conclude  that  all  Cape  apple 
trees  are  dwarfs,  for  Orleans  and  Barnstable 
at  least  will  show  trees  of  the  full  stature  of 
Niagara  County  or  the  Hudson  Valley.    The 


On  the  Land  i47 

historian  of  Truro  enlarges  on  the  luxuriance 
of  the  apples  and  other  fruit,  including  quinces. 
Of  the  low  habit  of  the  apple  trees  he  says — 
''Trees  not  higher  than  a  man's  head  will 
often  throw  out  lateral  branches  twenty  feet 
or  more  and  yield  freely.  It  is  not  uncommon 
for  the  fruit  growing  on  the  uphill  side  to  rest 
on  the  ground/' 

The  Corey  fruit  farm  is  on  the  south  side  of 
the  Pamet  valley  in  a  recess  in  the  hills.  A 
Portuguese,  born  in  the  Azores,  and  his  son, 
gradually  cleared  a  tract  of  forest,  leaving  a 
wooded  rim  on  three  sides,  and  here  they  have 
brought  to  bearing  several  acres  of  apples, 
peaches,  pears  and  pltims.  The  growth  is 
luxuriant  and  the  drooping  branches  in  places 
rest  their  fruit  on  the  groimd.  The  trees  were 
heavily  loaded  and  looked  like  the  irrigation 
growths  of  the  Yakima  valley  or  Western 
Oregon.  The  soil  is  sand,  "worse  the  farther 
you  go  down,"  and  is  kept  up  with  fertilizers. 
There  is  thorough  priming,  spraying,  and  thin- 
ning and  the  fruit  is  marketed  by  auto  on  the 
Cape  without  middlemen. 

A  thousand  fowls  are  kept  and  the  broilers 
and  the  eggs  are  sent  to  the  Massachusetts 
General  Hospital.  This  orchard  is  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  Cape,  and  it  is  not  far  from  a  mile 
and  a  half  either  to  the  Bay  or  to  the  ocean. 


148  Cape  Cod 

Mr.  Corey's  half  a  thousand  trees  at  Edge- 
wood  Farm  show  what  industry  and  high 
intelHgence  can  do  with  the  Cape  soils  and 
climate,  and  the  enterprise  has  served  as  a 
model  and  object  lesson  to  hundreds  of  gar- 
deners and  farmers  in  the  eastern  parts  of  the 
Bay  State. 

There  are  many  gardens  in  exposed  Truro, 
often  on  low  kettle-hole  floors  in  the  midst  of 
thin  and  brown  pastures  and  acres  of  wild 
moor.  Thus  environed  with  a  half -desert  of 
mosses  and  wild  cranberry,  these  small,  shel- 
tered and  moist  plots  produce  all  the  common 
vegetables  in  luxuriant  profusion.  By  the  rail- 
way in  Wellfleet,  completely  framed  in  forests 
of  pitch  pine,  one  gets  a  flying  glimpse  from 
the  car  window  of  one  of  these  little  paradises 
of  domestic  culture.  On  the  uplands,  however, 
of  the  lower  Cape,  the  turnip,  corn  and  beans 
often  look  the  image  of  poverty  and  cast  doubt 
on  the  sage  conclusion  of  Josh  Billings  that 
"piety  and  white  beans  flourish  best  on  poor 
sile." 

The  salt  marshes  of  the  Cape  border,  now 
offer  little  in  the  production  of  food  for  man 
or  beast.  In  old  days  they  were  vastly  im- 
portant for  their  salt  hay,  and  in  time  to  come 
they  will  be  reclaimed  and  be  like  little 
patches  of  Netherlands  lowland.     We  may 


On  the  Land  i49 

reckon  nearly  twenty  thousand  acres  or  more 
than  thirty  square  miles,  as  the  Cape's  endow- 
ment of  such  swamps,  which  the  tides  are  add- 
ing to  the  land  areas.  They  are  found  from 
Sandwich  to  Provincetown  on  the  inner  shore 
and  from  Buzzards  Bay  around  the  south 
shore,  but  are  absent  from  Nauset  to  Province- 
town  on  the  outside.  The  largest  swamps  are 
the  Great  Marshes  of  Barnstable  and  those 
along  the  Herring  River  in  Wellfleet. 

The  marshes  of  Barnstable  seem  intermin- 
able even  though  they  are  rimmed  by  the  long 
dune  range  of  Sandy  Neck.  A  survey  for  a 
Cape  Cod  canal  made  by  James  Winthrop  in 
1 79 1  records  an  estimate  of  four  thousand 
acres  of  marsh  there.  A  committee  was  early 
appointed  in  Sandwich  to  divide  the  meadow- 
lands,  to  give  *' to  every  man  such  a  portion  as 
shall  be  esteemed  equal  and  suitable  to  his 
necessity  and  ability.'*  The  holdings  ranged 
from  one  to  forty -two  acres. 

President  Dwight  saw  several  thousand 
stacks  of  hay  on  the  Great  Marshes.  This  is 
much  changed  to-day  and  salt  grass  is  little 
cut  now  as  compared  with  olden  times.  It  is 
injurious  to  milk  when  fed  to  cows  and  has 
largely  been  replaced  by  upland  hay,  which, 
in  spite  of  romancing  magazine  writers,  has  a 
way  of  growing  in  the  upland  meadows  of 


150  Cape  Cod 

Barnstable.  The  lonesomest  thing  about  the 
Great  Marshes  in  an  August  day,  when  the 
hay  ought  to  be  there,  is  to  see  groups  of  low 
piles,  driven  long  ago  to  raise  the  stacks  above 
the  marsh,  now  unused  and  going  to  decay. 

No  doubt  there  has  been  a  decline  in  Cape 
farming,  but  it  is  due  not  so  much  to  depletion 
of  soil,  as  to  absorption  in  other  occupations. 
The  going  over  to  other  means  of  livelihood 
arises  from  greater  profit,  for  the  staple  foods 
come  in  from  lands  lying  far  to  the  west. 
Cheap  transportation,  richer  soils  and  fields 
adapted  to  machine  tillage,  have  wrought  the 
change.  This  is  the  same  story  that  may  be 
told  all  over  New  England,  and  even  in  New 
York,  where  farming  has  been  limited  and 
directed  into  specialties  of  culture. 

Getting  down  to  hard  facts,  Barnstable 
County  has  a  little  less  than  a  fifth  of  its  land 
in  farms.  This  is  less  than  any  other  Massa- 
chusetts county  has  except  Nantucket  and 
Suffolk,  the  latter  containing  the  city  of  Bos- 
ton. Plymouth  Coimty  has  nearly  a  third  of 
its  land  in  farms,  but  this  is  less  than  half  as 
compared  with  the  six  great  counties  from 
Middlesex  westward  to  the  New  York  State 
line. 

No  county  in  Connecticut  has  less  than 
three  times  the  proportion  of  farm  lands  which 


On  the  Land  151 

Barnstable  County  shows.  Even  Maine  with 
its  enormous  wilderness  has  but  one  county 
with  a  smaller  proportion  of  farm  lands  than 
Barnstable. 

If  one  is  looking  for  bread  there  is  not  much 
on  the  Cape  that  does  not  come  from  far. 
Considering  the  whole  state  in  19 10,  Barn- 
stable raised  one  bushel  of  cereals  in  two  him- 
dred,  but  Plymouth  Coimty  did  better,  with 
one  bushel  in  about  thirty-three.  Remember- 
ing the  frequent  early  stories  of  wheat,  rye 
and  barley,  Barnstable  in  the  last  census  had 
a  paltry  two  acres  of  wheat — thirty- one  bush- 
els— with  no  barley  and  only  sixteen  acres  of 
rye.  Even  of  corn,  which  was  in  every  field 
and  on  every  annalist's  page  in  Puritan  days, 
the  Cape  raised  less  than  a  half-bushel  for 
each  of  its  people. 

Barnstable  and  Plymouth  have  gone  over 
to  fruit  and  vegetables,  with  some  attention 
to  the  dairy  and  to  poultry.  By  far  the  largest 
production  is  in  the  small  fruits,  of  which 
these  two  counties  of  the  Old  Colony  raise 
more  than  three  quarters  of  all  that  are  grown 
in  Massachusetts.  If  we  include  orchard  and 
small  fruits  they  make  about  two  thirds  of  all 
the  foods  that  come  from  the  soil  of  the  Cape. 

Here  we  have  a  typical  adaptation  to  wide- 
reaching  modern  conditions,  in  a  region  which 


152  Cape  Cod 

once  had  to  raise  nearly  all  of  its  own  food. 
Now  it  raises  what  is  suitable  to  its  climate  and 
its  soil  and  fits  its  products  to  its  neighborly 
markets,  which  are  afforded  by  the  summer 
migrants  of  the  shore,  and  the  great  popula- 
tions of  Boston  and  Providence. 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  find  a  better  adap- 
tation of  nature's  conditions  to  a  crop  that  one 
sees  in  the  cranberry.  The  Old  Colony  got 
from  the  glacial  invasion  and  the  resulting 
break-up  of  old  drainage  lines,  more  than  its 
share  of  swampy  flats.  It  is  usually  easy  to 
find  a  sand  bank  in  neighborly  relation  to  the 
bog,  and  exposure  to  oceanic  influences  has 
given  a  longer  season  without  killing  frosts 
than  is  found  in  most  parts  of  the  northern 
states.  To  be  able  to  flood  the  field,  to  dress 
it  with  sand  and  to  have  a  long  growing  sea- 
son— these  are  the  three  essentials  of  cranberry 
culture. 

It  is  not  an  old  industry.  There  was  an 
accidental  discovery,  early  in  the  last  century, 
in  North  Dennis.  Sand  blew  in  on  a  patch  of 
wild  cranberries  and  showed  what  it  could  do 
for  them.  The  real  culture  of  the  berry  began 
in  1846  and  1847  at  Pleasant  Lake  in  Harwich 
and  apparently  there  is  no  town  on  the  Cape 
which  is  more  dotted  with  the  bogs  or  more 
pervaded  by  a  kind  of  cranberry  atmosphere 


E 

< 


On  the  Land  153 

than  this  same  old  Harwich.  If  Harwich  has 
rivals  in  the  frequency  of  lakes  and  abundance 
of  swamps,  they  are  Yarmouth  and  Barnstable 
and  all  three  are  great  cranberry  towns.  There 
are  many  in  Brewster  and  Dennis,  some  in 
Orleans,  and  not  many  in  Chatham.  West  of 
Barnstable,  the  crop  is  in  moderate  propor- 
tions, I  in  Mashpee,  Falmouth,  Sandwich  and 
Bourne,  and  then  come  the  great  areas  and  in- 
numerable bogs  of  Plymouth  County.  All  the 
Massachusetts  cranberries  pass  in  the  common 
thought  as  Cape  Cod  product,  though  more  are 
grown  in  Plymouth  than  in  Barnstable. 

A  Reverend  Mr.  Eastman  of  North  Dennis 
published  a  book  on  the  cranberry  and  its  cul- 
tivation. Cuttings  were  sent  thence  to  New 
Jersey  to  start  the  culture  there.  Wild  cran- 
berries were  used  in  times  before  its  commer- 
cial development,  for  there  was  a  ruling  as  far 
back  as  1750  that  no  bayberries  should  be 
gathered  until  September  10,  and  no  cran- 
berries, wild  berries  of  course,  until  October 
I,  under  penalty  of  two  pounds  for  each 
offence. 

Not  many  cranberry  bogs  can  be  seen  on 
the  Cape  below  the  town  of  Orleans,  though 
331  barrels  were  reported  for  Provincetown  as 
far  back  as  1859.  From  Orleans  up  the  Cape, 
however,  nothing  is  more  common  or  charac- 


154  Cape  Cod 

teristic.  You  see  the  bogs  from  the  railway, 
from  the  highways  and  along  the  by-paths. 
They  are  irregular  in  shape,  running  into  se- 
cluded nooks  and  rovmding  the  bases  of  gla- 
cial hills,  while  ditches  for  flooding  and  drain- 
age run  around  the  border  and  in  square  pat- 
terns through  the  interior  of  the  biggest  bogs. 

Looking  off  over  the  field  the  vines  do  not 
seem  more  than  a  few  inches  in  height,  but 
that  they  are  straggling  and  long  appears 
when  the  harvester  draws  his  scoop  through 
them  and  pulls  them  from  their  lurking  places 
near  the  ground. 

Invention  has  done  its  part  in  the  cranberry 
harvest,  for  not  only  is  handpicking  almost 
abandoned,  but  the  smaller  scoop  as  well. 
Most  pictures  show  the  men  and  women  on 
their  knees  in  the  bog,  which  during  the  pick- 
ing season  is  however  anything  but  wet.  In 
recent  years  the  big  scoop  has  come  in.  The 
scoop  is  about  sixteen  inches  wide,  with  about 
that  mmiber  of  flattened  tines,  so  spaced  as  to 
let  the  vines  drag  through  and  hold  the  berries. 
When  full  the  scoop  holds  six  quarts,  and  the 
pickers,  giving  it  three  or  four  shoves  through 
the  tangle,  usually  find  it  loaded  with  three 
or  four  quarts.  It  is  stooping  work,  and  stren- 
uous it  would  seem  for  all  but  muscular  and 
wiry  backs. 


On  the  Land  155 

A  bushel  may  be  picked  in  five  minutes  or 
even  less,  though  the  average  time  is  greater. 
A  good  picker,  working  at  twenty  cents  a 
bushel,  readily  earns  a  dollar,  or  even  a  dollar 
and  a  half,  in  an  hour.  An  expert  in  picking, 
the  superintendent  of  a  big  bog,  a  sturdy 
middle-aged  Finn,  said  that  handpicking, 
involving  the  opening  of  the  vine  tangle  with 
the  hands,  was  not  nearly  so  favorable  for  the 
future  well-being  of  the  bog,  as  the  scoop 
method.  By  the  latter  the  vines  are  pulled 
up  somewhat  evenly,  and  after  the  removal  of 
the  crop,  clipped  off  at  a  certain  height,  pro- 
viding for  good  and  uniform  development  the 
following  season. 

The  big  scoop  might  seem  wasteful  if  we 
did  not  take  account  of  the  time  and  cost  of 
labor.  Several  barrels  of  berries  may  be  left 
on  an  acre  and  hand-gleaning  would  soon  pro- 
vide berries  enough  for  a  thanksgiving  feast. 
But  the  market  value  of  these  left-overs  woiild 
be  far  exceeded  by  the  cost  of  rescuing  them. 
The  big  Finn  was  expecting  about  four  thou- 
sand barrels  from  the  forty  acres  of  bog  where 
he  was  opening  the  picking  season. 

The  bogs  and  the  pickers,  and  the  colors  of 
the  filled  crates  give  zest  to  the  September 
landscape,  and  a  near  view  of  the  field  glowing 
with  ovoid  jewels  might  easily  raise  an  ambi- 


156  Cape  Cod 

tion  to  own  a  cranberry  farm.  Like  other 
enterprises  it  has  its  ins  and  its  outs,  its 
gains  and  losses.  It  costs  to  grade  and  plant 
and  weed  a  bog,  and  when  one  takes  account 
of  flooding  and  frosts  and  insect  pests  of  vari- 
ous kinds,  of  the  labor  involved  and  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  market,  he  may  well  hesitate 
until  sure  he  has  the  capital,  the  intelligence, 
and  the  intrepidity  which  any  other  worth- 
while enterprise  demands. 

After  the  cranberry  comes  the  strawberry,  a 
remote  second  in  acres  and  dollars  and  yet  not 
to  be  forgotten.  They  are  early — a  June  crop 
on  the  Cape,  opening  the  small  fruit  season  as 
the  cranberry  closes  it,  and  flourishing  on  the 
high  and  dry  ground,  where  the  tangled  mat 
and  brilliant  round  berries  of  the  hog  cran- 
berry might  thrive,  but  where  the  thanksgiv- 
ing fruit  could  not  grow.  Both  berries  there- 
fore show  a  definite  response  to  soil  conditions. 
There  is  enough  upland  bearing  a  light  loam 
cover  to  raise  in  Barnstable  County,  straw- 
berries for  all  New  England. 

As  yet,  however,  there  is,  in  a  large  commer- 
cial way,  but  one  strawberry  town  and  that  is 
Falmouth.  And  there  is  but  one  strawberry 
raiser,  the  "Portugee."  Seventy-three  car- 
loads of  this  fruit  were  shipped  from  the  freight 
depot  of  Falmouth  village  in  the  summer  of 


On  the  Land  157 

1919.  This  will  mean  more  if  we  say  that  two 
to  three  hundred  crates  make  a  carload,  and 
that  a  crate  may  hold  from  thirty-two  to  sixty 
quarts.  Striking  an  average  and  doing  a  bit 
of  multiplying,  it  comes  out  that  somewhere 
near  a  million  quarts  of  berries  went  to  Boston 
and  other  markets. 

This  is  an  achievement  of  about  ten  years, 
by  newly  immigrated  men  and  women,  and 
let  it  be  added,  by  the  rather  nimierous  chil- 
dren that  count  in  every  Portuguese  family. 
It  is  a  story  of  family  toil,  of  oak  scrub,  grub- 
bing, burning,  plowing,  planting,  fertilizing 
and  cultivation.  The  fields  are  clean,  the  rows 
are  straight  and  the  plants  are  deep  green  and 
strong,  and  in  them  a  new  phase  has  been 
welded  into  the  industrial  life  of  the  Cape. 

The  Portuguese  have  not  forgotten  the  rasp- 
berry, and  the  bright  red  of  this  fruit  finds  its 
way  out  of  Falmouth  to  the  amount  of  fifty 
crates  per  day  in  the  picking  season.  The 
little  plantations  are  not  without  com  and 
beans  for  home  consumption,  and  the  thrifty 
owner,  who  has  not  been  trained  to  be  dis- 
tressed by  the  toiling  of  wife  or  child  in  the 
field,  cranks  his  truck  and  goes  to  market  over 
a  state  road,  and  moves  on  an  economic  plane 
several  notches  above  the  condition  of  his  old 
life  in  the  Atlantic  Islands. 


158  Cape  Cod 

The  Cape  has  another  gardening  specialty 
in  the  crops  of  asparagus  that  flourish  in  the 
town  of  Eastham.  One  or  more  carloads  of 
this  vegetable  go  from  the  railway  station 
each  morning  in  the  season  and  fields  of  sev- 
eral acres  are  common  objects  by  the  roadside. 
One  grower  in  Eastham  expects  to  increase  his 
plantation  from  the  present  twelve  acres  to 
forty  or  fifty.  He  bought  nine  acres  out  of  his 
twelve,  paying  five  hundred  dollars  for  each 
of  them.  The  great  ranch  at  Hatchville  has 
eight  acres  in  asparagus  and  will  have  five 
times  this  amount  if  present  plans  are  carried 
out.  The  director  of  the  Cape  Cod  Farm 
Bureau,  expects  asparagus  to  increase  on  all 
parts  of  the  Cape,  but  he  does  not  expect  to 
see  another  town  go  as  far  with  the  ctilture  as 
has  been  done  by  the  farmers  of  Eastham. 

There  is  a  new  agricultural  life  of  the  Cape. 
Afresh  impulse  has  come  in  old  Barnstable  as 
it  has  among  the  hills  of  Connecticut  or  in  the 
valleys  of  Vermont.  Some  crops  can  be  raised 
on  Cape  soils  and  it  is  worth  while  to  raise 
them.  The  farmer  can  get  as  much  return 
from  a  quarter  of  an  acre  of  com  as  he  could 
formerly  from  two  or  three  acres.  Foreigners 
must  however  do  most  of  the  farming  be- 
cause the  natives  will  not.  Many  retired  peo- 
ple live  on  Cape  Cod,  and  they  will  not  clear 


On  the  Land  159 

the  scrub  or  dig  in  the  soil,  when  they  have  al- 
ready the  modest  income  which  will  support 
quiet  and  simple  lives  of  comparative  leisure. 

Vegetables,  fruit  and  poultry  will  offer  per- 
manent industries  on  the  Cape,  and  the  fruits 
will  include  apples  but  not  peaches,  which  need 
more  sheltered  situations.  Dairying  can  hard- 
ly be  other  than  local  and  limited,  because  the 
amount  of  pasturage  is  small  and  the  cost  of 
imported  grain  is  prohibitive.  Cereals  during 
the  year  of  this  writing  quite  outdid  the  cen- 
sus record.  Indeed  this  has  been  true  for  more 
than  one  year,  as  in  so  many  other  parts  of 
the  East,  because  of  the  impulse  given  by  the 
v/ar  to  the  raising  of  breadstuff  s.  A  single  firm 
was  threshing  the  grain,  mostly  wheat  and 
rye,  from  one  hundred  acres  of  land  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Barnstable. 

Roadside  markets  are  coming  into  vogue  in 
the  Cape  summertime,  and  in  this  there  is 
the  greatest  variety,  for  some  farmers,  or  their 
wives,  can  make  attractive  displays  and  others 
have  no  trace  of  this  art.  Those  who  do  make 
their  wares  alluring  can  sell  them  at  almost 
any  price  when  so  many  pass  with  plethoric 
pocketbooks  and  prepared  to  be  surprised  by 
luscious  fruits  and  choice  vegetables  derived, 
in  spite  of  reported  barrenness,  from  the  Cape 
soils.    So  long  as  food  is  imported  into  the 


i6o  Cape  Cod 

Cape  during  every  month  in  the  year  the  local 
farmer  need  not  fear  for  his  market. 

The  farm  bureau  seems  to  be  putting  a  new 
impulse  at  work,  and  it  reaches  not  only  the 
farmers,  but  the  schools  and  jtinior  clubs  in  its 
worthy  propaganda.  The  Bureau  works  in 
co-operation  with  the  Massachusetts  Agricul- 
tural College  and  the  United  States  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture.  Thousands  of  persons 
have  attended  the  various  community  meet- 
ings and  farm  demonstrations. 

Even  the  casual  eye  cannot  overlook  the  new 
developments  on  the  upper  Cape.  Old  gar- 
dens have  taken  on  fresh  beauty  and  plenty 
of  new  ones  have  been  created.  The  walls, 
the  fences,  the  arbors  and  beds  of  shrubbery 
begin  to  remind  one  of  the  greenery  of  the 
English  countryside,  for  be  it  remembered,  a 
climate  which  is  mild  in  spite  of  bad  repute  of 
New  England  winters,  lets  every  season's 
growth  build  on  the  last,  and  does  not,  as  in 
our  continental  interiors,  destroy  a  summer's 
achievement  by  the  zero  descents  of  the 
succeeding  winter. 

The  summer  resident  likes  to  dabble  in  fields 
as  well  as  flowers,  and  the  tallest  oats  the 
writer  ever  saw  stood  in  the  shock  by  a  summer 
mansion  on  the  Falmouth  plain.  And  there 
was  corn,  which  like  many  other  plots  and 


On  the  Land  i6i 

fields  of  this  grain  in  Falmouth,  Sandwich, 
Mashpee  and  Barnstable,  would  have  looked 
well  on  an  Ohio  or  Iowa  plain.  The  landlord 
of  the  old  hotel  by  Mashpee  Lake  said  that 
feed  corn  at  more  than  two  dollars  a  bushel 
was  too  much  for  him  and  he  broke  up  several 
acres  of  hillside  that  may  not  have  been 
plowed  in  forty  years,  and  on  most  of  the  slope 
he  had  a  fair  crop  coming.  A  neighbor's  field, 
which  had  had  a  decade  of  careful  bringing  up, 
with  fish  for  fertilizing,  had  corn  like  a  forest. 

Hatchville  is  a  hamlet  in  the  outwash  plain 
several  miles  north  of  Falmouth.  One  passes 
through  forests  to  get  there  and  finds  tokens 
of  rather  ancient  culture  around  the  waters  of 
beautiful  Coonemosett.  There  are  cranberry 
bogs  around  the  lake  above  the  water  level, 
with  pumps  for  flooding,  and  other  bogs  follow 
down  the  natural  grades  of  the  outlet  valley. 
Some  of  the  farms  show  excellent  culture  and 
a  variety  of  crops,  including  apple  orchards 
well  laden. 

Close  at  hand  is  an  example  of  general  farm- 
ing on  a  large  scale  with  application  of  all 
modern  methods.  Here  are  the  central  build- 
ings from  which  stretch  out  on  the  plain  the 
fourteen  thousand  acres  of  the  great  ranch  in 
which  Mr.  Charles  R.  Crane  is  interested. 
There  is  not  much  left  to  be  desired  in  the 


i62  Cape  Cod 

farm  buildings,  which  include  the  office  of  the 
superintendent,  great  bams  and  an  ice  plant. 
The  central  feature  is  a  herd  of  a  hundred 
cattle,  Holstein,  Jersey  and  Guernsey.  To 
drive  in  the  fields  was  suggestive  of  the  spaces 
of  the  West.  There  was  a  sixty-acre  cornfield, 
flanked  by  a  great  pile  of  en3pty  barrels. 
Wondering  what  they  had  held,  the  fish  scales 
that  still  clung  to  the  staves  told  the  story. 
They  had  fertilized  the  cornfield,  putting  on  the 
fish  with  a  manure-spreader.  There  was  good 
second  growth  clover,  a  poor  meadow,  a  fair  po- 
tato field,  and  eight  acres  of  yoimg  asparagus. 
All  aroimd  was  oak  scrub,  and  out  beyond 
this  very  flat  piece  of  the  outwash  plain  the 
Falmouth  moraine  rose  boldly  on  the  north 
and  west.  All  this  is  deeply  interesting,  and 
may  mean  much  for  the  Cape.  It  must  be 
remembered  nevertheless  that  this  type  of 
model  farming  is  not  for  the  aspiring  boy  with 
no  capital,  and  so  it  may  be  that  the  object 
lesson  loses  much  of  its  value.  It  may  well  be 
suspected  that  such  farming  cannot  pay,  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  for  it  can  never  bring  re- 
turns on  the  vast  overhead  expenses  that  must 
have  been  involved.  But  such  operations  at 
least  might  check  the  imagination  of  polite 
scribes  who  find  so  much  delight  in  the  barren- 
ness of  Cape  Cod. 


On  the  Land  163 

Not  far  away  at  Forest  Dale,  reached  more 
naturally  through  the  forests  from  Sandwich, 
is  the  estate  of  Dr.  Lombard,  who  combines 
ranching  in  Colorado  with  big  farming  in  the 
Old  Colony.  Here  are  about  fifteen  himdred 
acres,  with  the  central  parts  under  cultivation. 
There  were  eight  acres  of  corn,  and  eight  acres 
of  potatoes,  as  fine  a  stand  as  could  be  seen  in 
Aroostook  one  would  think,  with  rows  stretch- 
ing half  a  mile  and  straight  as  a  beam  of  light. 
This  was  the  second  crop  on  recently  broken 
scrub.  The  trees  are  pulled  with  tractors  and 
the  plough  goes  in  two  feet,  pulled  by  a  forty 
horse  tractor.  Then  a  powerful  disk  is  put 
over  it,  and  right  here  in  the  middle  of  the 
parlor  writer's  Sahara,  the  soil,  the  humus- 
filled  layer,  was  eighteen  inches  deep.  Of 
cour.^e  this  is  exceptional,  for  Cape  soils  are 
patchy,  but  it  reveals  possibilities. 

Mr.  Frederic  Tudor  of  Buzzards  Bay  is  an- 
other of  the  growing  group  of  progressive 
farmers  on  the  Cape,  working  a  tract  of  four 
hundred  acres,  and  combining  cattle,  poultry, 
fruit,  and  vegetables  in  his  enterprise.  He 
thinks,  however,  that  the  future  of  the  Cape 
region  is  in  small,  one-man  farms  of  five  or 
ten  acres  with  the  same  mixed  production  to 
which  he  devotes  himself  on  a  larger  scale. 

The  Cape  seems  peculiarly  fitted  for  nursery 


i64  Cape  Cod 

operations  and  much  has  been  done  in  this 
field  during  a  few  recent  years.  An  example 
is  found  in  the  Farquhar  nurseries  in  Barn- 
stable, a  branch  of  a  larger  establishment 
lying  inland  in  eastern  Massachusetts.  The 
account  of  its  superintendent  is  quite  worth 
quoting  as  showing  what  can  be  done  on  lands 
supposed  to  be  fit  only  for  a  wilderness. 

''The  nursery  was  started  six  years  ago,  the 
land  then  being  old  pasture,  and  oak  stiunps, 
and  pitch  pine.  The  soil  is  good,  light  loam 
with  spots  of  peat  or  clay.  We  are  still  clear- 
ing land  as  needed.  We  find  the  climate  more 
even  than  inland  and  little  loss  from  winter 
killing  of  plants.  This  district  is  called  the 
Plains,  and  is  about  three  miles  from  salt  water 
north  and  south.  Farming  near-by  is  small  and 
rather  poor.  Some  of  our  principal  crops  are 
azaleas,  kalmias,  roses,  lilacs  and  other  orna- 
mental plants;  conifers,  poplars,  willows  and 
a  general  line  of  nursery  stock.  We  grow  a 
great  many  hardy  liliimis  in  all  stages  from 
seed  to  larger  bulbs,  also  some  flower  and 
vegetable  seed.  All  our  crops  grow  well,  and 
we  find  the  soil  and  climate  very  suitable  for 
this  business.  We  have  about  sixty-three 
acres  in  cultivation.*' 

In  the  western  end  of  Barnstable  village, 
back  of  a  comfortable  mansion,  several  acres 


On  the  Land  165 

of  rolling  moraine  lead  down  to  the  border  of 
Great  Marshes  and  Barnstable  Bay.  This 
small  farm  is  a  forest  nursery  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  Work  began  here  in  19 1 3,  and 
the  nursery  now  has  over  four  hundred  seed- 
beds, covering  eight  acres  of  land.  The  plant- 
ings consist  of  white  pine,  Scotch  pine,  Norway 
spruce,  larch,  Douglas  fir,  and  arbor  vitae. 
About  a  million  two-year  white  pines  will  be 
ready  to  plant  in  1920.  The  nursery  now  has 
four  million  trees  in  various  stages  of  growth. 
A  htmdred  years  later  when  two  or  three  gen- 
erations of  conservation  have  succeeded  the 
destructive  revel  of  the  lumbermen  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  glory  of  the  New 
England  white  pine  may  revive,  and  the 
forest  production  become  as  real  as  it  is  now 
reminiscent. 

This  is  what  industry  and  careful  thinking 
have  done  on  Cape  lands.  It  was  no  outsider 
with  money,  but  young  Cape  blood,  which  has 
developed  the  great  Mayo  duck  farm  on  high 
and  steep-sloping  hills  that  look  out  to  sea  on 
the  eastern  shore  of  the  town  of  Orleans. 

Nine  years  ago  there  came  to  one  of  the 
outer  towns  of  Barnstable  a  would-be  farmer 
who  had  never  milked  a  cow.  He  bought  a 
place,  put  a  mortgage  of  twelve  htmdred  dol- 
lars on  it  and  transformed  it  into  a  modern 


166  Cape  Cod 

home.  Now  he  has  a  dairy  of  ten  cows  and 
four  hundred  head  of  fowl.  Each  laying  bird 
cleared  him  last  year,  not  charging  in  his  labor, 
the  goodly  simi  of  five  dollars,  and  his  success 
has  been  so  pronounced  that  he  got  without 
hesitation  a  federal  farm  loan  of  two  thousand 
five  hundred  dollars. 

The  sands  of  Provincetown  have  another 
example  which  sounds  more  like  a  tale  than 
like  truth.  One  eighth  of  an  acre  holds  a 
house,  a  shed,  chicken  houses,  a  garage,  two 
greenhouses,  and  fifty  dwarf  trees.  Vege- 
tables grow  among  the  trees  and  buildings  and 
ten  thousand  eggs  are  an  annual  product. 
The  owner  has  supported  his  family  on  this 
ground  for  nearly  twenty  years,  and  his  records 
cover  the  whole  period.  He  has  not  imported 
soil,  and  has  never  bought  commercial  ferti- 
lizer. These  rural  miracles  would  tax  the  faith 
of  the  prairie  owner  of  a  half -section,  but  are 
less  unbelievable  if  one  has  compared  the  raw 
wastefulness  of  new  America  with  the  frugal 
and  laborious  husbandry  of  the  old  world. 

If  we  follow  the  coastal  belt  of  New  England 
from  the  New  York  border  to  a  remote  point 
in  Maine,  it  is  remarkably  given  over  to  the 
factory.  Beyond  Fall  River  and  New  Bedford 
however,  manufacturing  never  got  much  hold 
on  the  shore  of  the  Old  Colony.    Even  Plym- 


On  the  Land  167 

outh  is  only  enlivened,  not  vexed  with  wheels 
and  shafts,  and  Cape  Cod,  beyond  the  canal 
strip,  has  lived  on  in  primal  simplicity. 

The  only  great  manufacture  the  Cape  has 
ever  had  depended  on  the  proximity  of  the  sea. 
Plymouth  itself  had  an  early  trial  at  salt-mak- 
ing, but  the  fellow  who  was  sent  to  Plymouth 
to  make  salt  proved  worthless,  and  his  ineffi- 
ciency, as  far  back  as  1624,  helped  to  complete 
the  Plymouth  failure  in  building  up  a  fishing 
industry. 

About  all  American  salt  before  the  Revolu- 
tion was  made  from  sea  water,  which  was 
boiled  down  in  kettles.  It  took  three  hundred 
gallons  and  more  of  sea  water  to  make  a  bushel 
of  salt  and  to  get  the  needed  fuel  played  havoc 
with  the  slender  forests  in  the  northern  parts 
of  the  Cape.  During  the  Revolution  the 
General  Court,  following  an  action  of  the  Con- 
tinental Congress  on  the  importance  of  salt, 
urged  the  coast  towns  to  take  up  this  industry. 
As  a  bushel  of  salt  in  1783  was  worth  eight 
dollars,  no  great  persuasion  was  needed. 

Evaporation  by  the  sun's  heat  came  in  a 
little  later,  and  vats  were  built  which  could  be 
covered  in  time  of  rain.  This  was  about  the 
beginning  of  the  last  century.  A  resident  of 
Dennis  is  said  to  have  patented  a  method  of 
solar  evaporation  in  1799.    The  water  was  at 


168  Cape  Cod 

first  moved  by  means  of  buckets,  then  by  hand 
ptimps,  later  the  piimps  were  operated  by  wind 
power.  Outside  of  Barnstable  Coimty  salt  was 
made  at  Plymouth  and  Kingston,  at  Hingham 
and  Dorchester,  and  on  the  outer  islands. 

The  salt  business  seems  to  have  reached  its 
height  in  the  years  following  1830.  Then 
western  salt  began  to  come  in,  other  salt  came 
from  foreign  lands  and  the  cost  of  making  it 
on  the  Cape  rose  through  the  increase  in  the 
prices  of  the  limiber  built  into  the  vats,  for 
this  was  pine  from  the  State  of  Maine. 

Every  old  chronicle  has  much  to  say  about 
salt  and  tells  how  numerous  the  plants  were. 
In  Truro,  "salt  was  manufactured  all  along 
the  shore  and  by  creeks  and  coves  and  was 
brought  down  to  the  wharves  in  scows  to  a 
ready  market."  Eastham  at  one  time  had 
over  fifty  salt-making  plants  and  Chatham 
had  not  less  than  eighty.  Quite  in  harmony 
with  these  records.  Dr.  Palfrey  at  the  Barn- 
stable bicentennial  in  1839,  spoke  of  voyaging 
for  twenty  miles  south  of  Provincetown, 
"along  a  shore  which  seemed  bmlt  of  salt 
vats." 

The  upper  towns  of  the  Cape,  or  at  least 
several  of  them,  took  up  the  work  even  on  a 
larger  scale,  the  whole  Cape  using  at  one  time 
a  capital  of  two  million  dollars  and  producing 


On  the  Land  169 

not  far  from  a  third  of  a  million  bushels  each 
year.  Thoreau  speaks  of  salt  works  ''all  along 
the  shore."  He  had  just  come  from  the  wider 
parts  of  Massachusetts  and  was  dragging 
through  the  sands  of  Barnstable  and  its  neigh- 
bor towns  on  the  way  to  Orleans  where  his 
walks  began.  This  was  probably  in  1849  at 
the  time  of  his  first  visit.  Swift,  writing  the 
annals  of  Yarmouth  as  late  as  1884,  says  that 
the  salt  business  was  about  at  an  end.  The 
last  salt  plant  in  Yarmouth,  operated  by  one 
man,  was,  however,  making  twelve  hundred 
bushels  of  salt  as  late  as  1885. 

Timothy  Dwight,  whose  Cape  Journeys  and 
others  were  in  print  in  1823,  is  rarely  more 
interesting  than  in  his  rather  long  story  of  salt. 
He  describes  the  process  at  some  length,  and 
is  interested  in  the  prices  and  market  condi- 
tions. He  is  sure  the  business  cannot  be  over- 
done and  then,  assuming  easily  that  our 
American  coast  is  chiefly  barren  and  otherwise 
would  be  thinly  peopled,  he  foresees  multi- 
tudes gaining  their  living  in  this  useful  manner. 
There  were  seven  millions  of  people  in  this 
country  when  he  wrote  this  diary  in  181 1 ,  and 
he  discerningly  prophesies  that  within  a  mod- 
erate period  there  will  be  seventy  millions. 
They  will  all  need  work  and  they  will  all  need 
salt.    Of  course  therefore  they  will  build  salt 


I70  Cape  Cod 

vats  from  St.  Mary's  to  Machias.  Rhapsod- 
ically  he  goes  on;  affluence  will  spring  from 
the  sands  of  eternal  desolation;  villages  will 
smile  and  towns  will  rise  out  of  existing  soli- 
tudes. Let  him  set  before  the  reader  in  his 
own  words  his  eloquent  blending  of  economics 
and  religion.  *'May  not  multitudes,  who  ha- 
bitually spend  life  in  casual  and  parsimonious 
efforts  to  acquire  subsistence,  interluded  with 
long  periods  of  sloth  and  drimkenness,  become 
sober,  diligent,  and  even  virtuous,  and  be 
formed  for  usefulness  and  immortality?" 

Gristmills  and  sawmills  are  among  the 
earliest  necessities  of  a  new  settlement.  When 
the  Cape  began  to  be  settled  the  only  grist- 
mill was  at  Plymouth  and  long  journeys 
through  the  woods  were  the  only  recourse  of 
the  new  people  of  Sandwich.  But  carrying 
grists  on  backs  and  horse  backs  for  twenty 
miles  was  intolerable,  and  there  was  water 
power  at  Sandwich.  This  was  soon  utilized 
and  thus  simple  manufacture  began  on  the 
Cape. 

The  building  of  a  mill  came  under  a  public 
permit  and  regulation,  and  was  sometimes  sub- 
sidized. Mills  were  few  and  the  business  was 
vital,  hence  millers  were  exempted  from  mili- 
tary service  and  from  some  other  public  duties. 
There  is  less  and  less  water  power  as  one  goes 


On  the  Land  171 

farther  out  on  the  Cape.  In  time  there  were 
at  Sandwich  other  forms  of  industry,  and 
Freeman  records  the  existence  of  a  cotton  fac- 
tory, a  nail  factory,  and  marble  and  glass- 
works. 

In  Falmouth  there  were  in  time  eight  mills, 
one  fulling  and  seven  grist  mills,  most  of  them 
run  by  wind  power.  The  Montiment  Iron 
Company  of  Sandwich  was  incorporated  in 
1847.  An  Orleans  windmill  ground  grist  as 
late  as  1892.  One  of  the  hotel  cottages  at 
Highland  Light  is  known  as  the  Millstone. 
The  mill  was  on  a  hillock  west  of  the  light,  and 
one  of  the  great  stones  is  now  the  doorstep  of 
the  cottage.  Bricks  were  made  at  an  early 
date  in  Plymouth  and  also  in  Scituate. 

There  were  other  minor  industries.  Some 
of  them  were  related  to  the  forests.  Whites 
and  Indians  were  at  one  time  forbidden  to 
bark  or  chip  the  pine  trees  for  the  making  of 
turpentine.  Some  tar  was  made  and  found  a 
ready  market.  There  were  regulations  in 
Truro  against  cutting  wood  to  bum  lime  for 
export.  Thus  the  natural  limitations  of  the 
environment  were  reflected  in  the  commimi- 
ty's  struggle  to  protect  itself,  and  to  stretch 
its  small  resources  to  cover  home  necessities. 

Shipbuilding  was  a  natural  and  imperative 
industry,  and  the  denuding  of  forests  for  this 


172  Cape  Cod 

purpose  receives  frequent  notices  in  early 
chronicles.  Both  pine  and  oak  were  thus  used, 
and  that  they  could  be  used  suggests  that 
there  must  have  been  better  trees  than  now. 
Yet  it  must  be  remembered  that  ships  were 
small,  and  that  sticks  were  used  which  would 
be  disdained  by  the  ship-carpenter  of  to-day. 

A  flint-glass  factory  was  erected  in  Sand- 
wich in  1825;  and  this  industry  gained  a  per- 
manent place  in  Cape  history,  for  a  great 
factory  was  built  at  a  later  time,  whose  stacks 
and  walls  are  among  the  first  features  to  be 
seen  as  one  goes  upon  the  Cape  in  modem 
years.  In  1854,  the  capital  employed  was  five 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  the  yearly 
product  was  considerably  beyond  that  figure. 
For  a  long  time  these  glassworks  were  the 
largest  in  America.  The  business  ceased 
about  1880. 

The  Old  Colony  coast  strip  is  not  without 
its  mills  and  factories  but  it  does  not  go  in 
strongly  for  manufacturing  industries.  Yar- 
mouth has  wire-work,  Provincetown  puts  up 
canned  goods,  and  there  is  a  brickyard  at 
West  Barnstable,  where  some  of  the  old  glacial 
or  interglacial  clays  of  the  Cape  come  to  the 
surface. 

The  only  big  manufacture  on  Cape  Cod  is 
at  its  doorway.    There  was  a  blacksmith  shop 


On  the  Land  173 

in  Bourne  in  1829.  It  had  developed  into  a 
machine  shop  in  1 849 ;  and  made  among  other 
things,  tools  for  use  in  the  new  gold  mines  of 
California.  To-day  Sagamore  has  grown  up 
aroimd  the  immense  Keith  Car  Works.  The 
employees  fill  the  village  and  come  in  daily  from 
miles  of  the  surrotinding  country,  while  the 
siuprised  tourist,  making  his  first  journey  to 
the  Cape,  thinks  the  smoke  and  clatter  quite 
out  of  harmony  with  his  expectations,  and 
struggles  in  vain  to  look  out  on  the  waters  of 
the  Bay,  because  he  cannot  see  through  the 
endless  chain  of  new  and  empty  freight  cars 
that  have  been  rolled  out  on  the  siding  leading 
toward  Sandwich. 

There  is  a  small  factory  far  out  on  the  Cape, 
at  North  Truro  station,  which  is  more  in  har- 
mony with  its  environment.  Here  are  made 
jellies  of  beach  pltmi  and  wild  grape,  baskets 
out  of  cat-tail  flags,  and  trays  and  table  mats 
out  of  beach  grass.  But  the  main  product 
here  is  bayberry  wax.  The  gray  round  berries, 
the  size  of  shot,  are  brought  in  here  in  the 
auttimn,  in  October  and  November,  for  mak- 
ing bayberry  balm,  bayberry  cold  cream,  and 
bayberry  Christmas  novelties,  most  of  all  the 
bayberry  candle.  A  bushel  of  berries  makes 
three  or  four  pounds  of  dull  green  wax,  and  a 
yotmg  woman  will  at  all  times  obligingly  dem- 


174  Cape  Cod 

onstrate  the  dipping.  Thirty-five  dips  in  a 
pot  of  melted  wax,  and  as  many  coolings,  and 
the  candle  is  complete,  under  your  eyes. 

Every  respectable  large  town  in  New  Eng- 
land is  supposed  to  have  some  enterprise  that 
is  the  biggest  of  its  kind  in  the  world.  In  this 
old  Plymouth  rims  true  to  type.  In  its  circu- 
lars of  industrial  opportunity,  the  Plymouth 
boomer  tops  the  historic  interests  of  the  place 
with  the  Plymouth  Cordage  Company,  whose 
buildings  are  a  little  city  in  themselves.  And 
you  are  not  permitted  to  forget  that  regular 
steamers  bring  sisal  fiber  up  from  Yucatan 
and  steam  to  the  Company's  own  docks  in 
Plymouth  Harbor.  There  are  large  textile 
concerns  also,  and  factories  for  metal -work  and 
rubber,  and  other  smaller  industries. 

Still  it  is  true  that  the  visitor  may  enter 
Plymouth  for  two  hours  or  for  days,  and  not 
be  disturbed  by  smoke  or  by  sounds.  If  he 
happens  to  be  at  the  right  point  at  the  right 
hour  of  the  day,  he  will  see  hundreds  of  people 
leaving  their  work  and  boarding  the  electric 
cars  for  home,  but  still  he  may  tread  the  old 
Pilgrim  paths,  revel  in  relics  and  records,  pon- 
der above  the  historic  dead,  look  out  over  the 
Rock  upon  the  harbor  and  sand  beach  beyond, 
dream  of  the  Mayflower,  and  of  Scrooby,  and 
be  unmolested  by  modern  workaday  things. 


On  the  Land  175 

Plymouth  has  been  enlivened  and  enlarged, 
but  not  submerged. 

Communicating  to  an  elder  citizen  of  the 
Cape  the  view  that  the  simmier  business  was 
the  largest  industry  of  Barnstable  County,  he 
was  of  another  opinion,  and  thought  the  cran- 
berry was  first  and  fishing  possibly  a  second. 
Unconvinced  and  interpreting  the  kindly  gen- 
tleman's conviction  as  loyalty  to  the  older 
Cape,  every  intelligent  person  later  encoim- 
tered  was  rather  sure  to  be  faced  with  the  same 
question.  In  every  instance  the  visitor's  sat- 
isfaction was  increased  by  an  agreeing  answer 
— the  largest  material  matter  for  the  Old 
Colony's  foreland  is  the  summer  boarder  and 
the  summer  homemaker. 

In  other  phrase,  the  Cape  has  gone  over 
to  the  land,  but  only  because  the  land  is  by 
the  sea.  It  is  not  merely  so  much  in  board 
bills,  in  the  weekly  routine,  or  after  the  auto's 
one  night  sojourn ;  the  butcher,  the  baker,  and 
the  candlestick  maker  do  not  get  it  all,  for 
carpenters  and  pltmibers,  and  decorators  and 
perpetual  caretakers  receive  a  stream  of  money 
and  the  coffers  of  the  Cape  fill  in  a  thousand 
unseen  ways.  A  shoe  dealer  in  Hyannis 
prided  himself  in  his  good  year-round  trade 
but  confessed  that  "we'd  have  dull  times  if  it 
wasn't  for  the  summer  people."    Certainly  a 


176  Cape  Cod 

firm  of  Greeks  in  that  same  old  village,  doing 
an  immense  trade,  wholesale  and  retail,  in 
fruit,  would  have  no  place  among  the  Yankees 
of  that  shore,  if  the  hunger  of  extra  thousands 
had  not  every  summer  to  be  appeased. 

Sandwich  was  said  to  be  a  place  of  resort 
for  ''distinguished  persons  and  families"  be- 
fore the  days  of  Newport  and  Nahant,  and 
the  historian  (Freeman)  observes  that  retire- 
ment, comfort,  recreation  and  health  were 
then  preferred  to  display  and  the  crowds  of 
modern  watering  places. 

There  are  summer  crowds  in  some  places  on 
the  Cape,  but  it  cannot  yet  be  charged  that 
there  is  much  display.  There  is  luxurious 
comfort  in  home  surroundings,  but  the  utmost 
opulence  has  not  anywhere  on  the  Old  Colony 
shores  from  Marshfield  to  Provincetown  given 
itself  to  ostentation,  or  made  itself  offensive 
to  those  who  would  live  plainly  and  think 
nobly  by  the  sea. 

To  visit  the  town  hall  or  to  find  anywhere 
the  town  assessor,  and  view  the  tax  record  of 
the  past  thirty  years,  is  the  best  evidence  that 
summer  industry  is  dominant.  Falmouth  in 
1872  had  taxation  values  of  less  than  two  mil- 
lion dollars .  The  next  twenty-five  years  almost 
quadrupled  the  total  of  property  in  the  town, 
which  was  more  than  six  million  dollars  in 


On  the  Land  i77 

value.  Another  twenty-five  years  brought  the 
figure  up  to  twenty  milHon.  Most  of  the  per- 
sonal property  is  now  cut  from  that  figure  ow- 
ing to  recent  changes  in  the  order  of  state 
and  federal  taxes,  but  the  fact  remains,  the 
only  fact  that  interests  us  here,  that,  it  was 
not  farms  or  fishing  or  cranberries,  but  the 
summer  person  who  has  thus  added  to  the 
resources  of  this  old  town. 

The  financial  story  of  Chatham  is  the  same, 
for  real  estate  values  of  a  little  over  half  a 
million  in  1890  have  reached  in  19 19  a  figure 
of  more  than  two  million  dollars.  No  doubt 
Harwich,  Barnstable,  Yarmouth,  Orleans  and 
Provincetown  have  seen  like  changes,  which 
show  with  no  uncertainty  what  the  future  of 
the  Cape  is  to  be. 

Many  of  the  summer  homes,  it  must  be 
remembered,  have  not  been  built  by  alien 
hands.  They  stand  for  the  unforgetting  love 
and  loyalty  of  returning  sons  of  the  Cape,  who 
do  not  come  back  to  vaimt  their  prosperity, 
but  to  breathe  the  air  and  refresh  the  memories 
of  their  early  life,  or  to  rebuild  the  ancient 
homes  of  worthy  ancestors.  And  it  is  because 
they  have  come  that  a  beautiful  church  stands 
here  and  there,  that  public  libraries  are  as 
common  as  windmills  once  were,  and  that  the 
traveler  is  lifted  out  of  the  sand  and  whirled 


178  Cape  Cod 

over  joyous  roads  from  one  end  of  the  Cape 
to  the  other. 

The  government  map  of  Falmouth,  whose 
survey  was  made  perhaps  thirty  years  ago,  or 
a  Httle  more,  does  not  show  a  single  house  on 
the  road  that  runs  from  the  village,  between 
Salt  and  Fresh  Ponds  to  Vineyard  Soimd. 
Now  there  is  a  succession  of  mansions  each  in 
ample  grounds.  The  highway  is  macadam, 
the  hedges  are  scrupulously  geometrical,  and 
some  of  them  solid  green  of  eight  or  ten  feet 
in  width,  while  others  are  high  enough  to 
afford  truly  English  seclusion  of  home  gods. 

Some  of  the  inclosures  are  of  walls,  built  of 
the  abundant  scatterings  of  glacial  boulders, 
blooming  with  nasturtiums  or  banked  with 
tall  dahlias  or  barricades  of  sweet  honeysuckle. 
The  town  shows  its  roof -lines  among  trees  and 
again  the  landscape  would  be  English  if  only 
the  four-square  church-tower  were  of  stone 
instead  of  New  England  pine. 

A  stroller  along  the  Vineyard  shore  meets 
the  ominous  sign — "Private  dock  and  bath 
houses,  no  trespassing."  So  one  cannot  follow 
the  strand  there  tmless  possibly  over  a  stony 
pavement  at  low  tide.  In  the  necessary  de- 
tour, a  woman  comes  out  of  a  house  and  rows 
you  across  Falmouth  Harbor  for  a  small  coin. 
You  resiune  your  walk,  gently  querying  what 


On  the  Land  179 

a  temperate  comment  would  be  on  all  these 
arrangements,  and  you  are  perhaps  inclined  to 
feel  kindly  to  the  ferry  woman,  and  all-igno- 
rant of  strand  law,  you  wonder  whether  any- 
body has  a  real  right  to  warn  you  away  from 
the  Atlantic  Ocean.  It  is  just  one  of  the 
things  that  are  not  common  on  the  Cape,  and 
one  might  be  simple  and  primitive  enough  to 
wish  that  the  ancient  democracy  of  this  New 
England  comer  might  be  saved  for  all  time. 

So  it  is  that  most  Cape  men  live  on  the  Cape 
to-day.  No  longer  is  it  a  land  to  which  hardy 
sailors  come  from  the  Banks  or  from  the  an- 
tipodes, to  make  brief  visits  to  their  families 
and  deposit  their  savings  before  the  next  voy- 
age. The  people  of  to-day  are  landsmen,  most 
of  them,  voyaging  only  to  their  lobster- traps 
and  their  fish  weirs  or  to  tong  for  bivalves. 
But  they  still  breathe  the  sea  air,  their  apple 
trees  stand  low  under  the  gales,  their  gardens 
are  down  in  the  hollows,  and  if  they  do  not 
live  upon  the  legacies  of  their  shipping  fore- 
bears, they  minister  to  those  that  come  down 
to  the  sea — they  are,  as  the  learned  professor 
said,  amphibious  still. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  HARVEST  OF  THE  WATERS 

One  might  spend  his  summers  on  the  Cape 
for  years,  and  never,  unless  he  sought  it,  set 
his  eyes  on  a  codfish.  Yet  no  one  doubts  that 
the  Cape  was  suitably  named,  or  that  John 
Smith,  interested  more  in  whales,  found  cod- 
fish, and  sixty  thousand  of  them  in  a  single 
month.  ''The  best  mine  that  the  King  of 
Spain  hath"  would  not,  according  to  that 
thrifty  and  prophetic  old  sailor,  offer  more 
solid  values. 

American  fisheries  were  the  liveliest  thing 
in  the  mind  of  Europe,  when  that  mind  turned 
toward  the  newly  found  hemisphere.  Thou- 
sands of  fishing  voyagers  plowed  the  Atlantic 
waters  before  Gosnold,  and  Pring,  and  De- 
Monts,  and  Smith  wrote  their  names  on  the 
continental  border.  This  was  the  strongest 
force  that  impelled  the  English  and  the  French 
to  plant  colonies.  They  knew  the  ins  and  outs 
of  the  New  England  shore  long  before  the  Pil- 
grims sailed.     Samoset  learned  his  English 

1 80 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    i8i 

from  fishermen,  and  Plymouth  was  the  third 
name  given  to  that  place  by  explorers  from 
Europe. 

The  salt  waters  and  the  tide  fiats  were  an 
important  source  of  food,  for  Plymouth  and 
the  other  early  settlements,  and  this  supply 
was  imperative  in  times  of  scarcity.  But  fish- 
ing was  not  a  large  industry  in  Plymouth; 
indeed,  some  of  their  ventures  were  of  such  ill 
luck  that  they  said  the  fishing  undertakings 
of  Plymouth  were  always  ' '  f at al . "  S  ometimes 
they  had  to  cover  their  losses  in  fish  by  trading 
in  furs. 

Such  fishing  as  the  Pilgrims  accomplished 
is  an  example  of  the  force  of  environment, 
for  the  early  settlers  of  Cape  Cod  had  been 
farmers  and  artizans.  It  was  their  new  home 
that  sent  them  fishing  and  on  commercial  voy- 
ages. They  did  not  come  to  use  lines  and 
seines.  They  had  no  apparatus  or  supplies 
for  this  industry.  They  did  not  even  plan  to 
settle  where  the  fish  were,  but  would  have 
gone  to  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  it  may  be, 
if  the  sailing  had  been  good.  They  were  apt 
to  fail  when  they  tried  the  business,  even 
while  the  Massachusetts  and  Maine  colon- 
ists were  catching  and  selling  fish  to  great 
profit. 

The  Pilgrims  were  glad  to  fish  when  they 


i82  Cape  Cod 

were  hungry,  and  it  was  the  cod  and  other 
fish,  with  lobsters,  eels  and  clams,  or  oysters 
brought  to  them  by  the  Indians,  that  saved 
them  from  starvation.  The  industry  was  well 
recognized  in  the  early  regulations  and  stat- 
utes. This  was  true  even  while  the  Old  Colony 
kept  its  identity,  and  shortly  after  the  union 
with  Massachusetts,  or  in  1694,  the  General 
Court  made  laws  concerning  the  mackerel  and 
other  fisheries.  There  was  a  duty  prescribed 
of  twelve  pence  per  barrel,  recognizing  *'the 
providence  of  God  which  hath  made  Cape  Cod 
commodious  to  us  for  fishing  with  seines." 
The  proceeds  were  turned  over  for  the  support 
of  a  free  school  at  Plymouth. 

Barrels  of  fish  in  no  way  measure  the  im- 
portance of  fishing  in  the  Old  Colony.  Lines 
of  worldwide  trade  began  to  shoot  out  from 
the  coasts  of  Barnstable  and  Plymouth,  and 
it  was  fishing  that  was  behind  them.  This  was 
the  large  factor  in  starting  the  round  of  com- 
mercial exchanges.  Cape  ships  carried  the 
fish  to  the  West  Indies,  and  brought  back 
molasses  and  spirits,  which  the  Cape  wanted 
and  Boston  wanted. 

Here  too,  was  the  sailor's  schooling.  Sea- 
men by  the  hundreds,  rather  by  the  thousands, 
got  the  stern  training  which  enabled  them 
with  small  change  of  habit  to  pour  their  experi- 


PROVINCETOWN    DOCKS    WHEN    THE   TIDE    IS    OUT 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    183 

ence  and  their  daring  into  the  early  navies  of 
America. 

Whale  fishing  came  in  at  an  early  date,  along 
with  the  mackerel  and  the  cod,  and  was  in 
like  fashion  subject  to  the  restrictions  of  Co- 
lonial law.  The  first  voyagers  regretfully  saw 
fortunes  slip  away  from  them  as  the  whales 
frolicked  in  the  Bay  and  their  ships  were  as 
innocent  of  harpoons  as  they  were  of  small 
boats,  and  small  hooks  for  the  lesser  game  of 
the  sea.  But  they  atoned  for  early  unpre- 
paredness,  and  the  history  of  New  England 
whaling  in  its  later  thrills  and  greatness,  began 
in  Truro,  developed  in  Wellfieet  and  then  cen- 
tered in  Provincetown.  Thence  it  extended 
across  Nantucket  Sound  and  Buzzards  Bay  to 
Nantucket  and  New  Bedford. 

It  was  a  public  duty  in  Plymouth,  an  obli- 
gation resting  on  every  citizen,  to  watch  off- 
shore for  whales.  If  a  whale  was  sighted  a 
boat  was  at  once  launched  to  attack.  A 
''whaling  ground,"  or  reservation  for  watching, 
was  set  apart  on  the  ''North  shore,"  which 
was  in  the  northwestern  part  of  the  present 
town  of  Dennis.  As  time  went  on  this  watch- 
ing did  not  bring  returns,  for  the  whales  were 
leaving  the  Old  Colony  shores,  made  shy,  per- 
haps, and  learning  through  some  sort  of  animal 
wisdom,  that  there  was  greater  safety  in  the 


i84  Cape  Cod 

remote  and  open  waters.  Only  two  or  three 
whales  were  caught  near  Cape  Cod  in  the 
year  1746. 

Thoreau,  like  other  good  travelers,  read  all 
he  could,  before  he  went.  In  the  scattered  lit- 
erature of  the  old  Cape,  the  drift  whale  and  the 
minister's  un-whalelike  salary  had  stirred  his 
ready  capacity  for  the  ludicrous,  and  he  gives 
us  an  indelible  portrait  of  the  poor  clergyman 
eagerly  scanning  the  sea  from  his  perch  on  the 
shore.  The  minister  was  not  the  only  bene- 
ficiary of  the  stranded  whale;  the  school  re- 
ceived its  part  also,  for  school  and  church  and 
minister  all  moved  on  a  high  level  of  privilege 
and  honor  in  the  Old  Colony. 

The  drift  whale  was  not,  however,  turned 
over  as  a  pure  gift  of  God  to  heavenly  uses. 
Towns  had  their  rights,  and  private  finders 
had  theirs,  and  human  nature  being  about  at 
its  average,  there  was  much  controversy. 
Sandwich  had  its  full  share  of  drift-whale  regu- 
lations before  the  town  was  twenty  years  old, 
and  Old  Colony  riparian  rights  in  1654  took 
account  of  shore  owners  on  whose  strands 
whales  were  cast  up.  The  whale  killing  in  gen- 
eral became  profitable,  and,  so  early  as  1687, 
two  himdred  tons  of  oil  were  exported  to 
England;  ''one  of  our  best  returnes." 

The  blackfish  is  a  small  whale  which  runs 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    185 

in  schools  in  the  Bay.  A  hundred  or  more  of 
these  creatures  may  strand  themselves  on  the 
beach,  and  in  the  older  days  there  was  a  rush 
of  men  and  boats,  if  a  school  was  sighted,  to 
drive  them  to  shore,  for  the  valuable  oil  that 
their  heads,  or  some  part  of  their  heads, 
afforded.  They  are  not  sought  now,  and  their 
coming  uninvited  imposes  the  burden  of  tow- 
ing their  cumbersome  carcasses  out  to  sea, 
lest  their  decomposition  make  existence  intol- 
erable on  the  strand.  Blackfish  Creek  in  Well- 
fleet  has  received  such  a  visit  in  recent  years, 
and  the  sands  at  the  approach  to  Province- 
town,  where  seventy-five  of  these  unwieldy 
bodies  lay  on  the  beach,  ranging  in  length  from 
six  to  twenty  feet  or  more. 

Sharks  are  not  unknown  on  Cape  Cod 
shores,  though  none  were  seen  there  during 
the  season  not  long  past  when  some  lives  were 
lost  on  the  shores  not  far  to  the  south.  Free- 
man records  the  existence  of  shark-fishing  at 
Race  Point,  where  as  many  as  two  hundred 
were  taken  in  a  single  year. 

The  last  two  centuries  have  seen  each  a  great 
development  in  fishing  in  the  Old  Colony. 
The  earlier  growth  reached  its  height  about 
the  opening  of  the  Revolution  when  more  than 
a  thousand  ships  swept  the  waters  and  more 
than  ten  thousand  men  were  engaged.    These 


186  Cape  Cod 

ships  and  these  men  took  a  great  part  in  driv- 
ing the  French  power  from  the  American  con- 
tinent, and  then,  smarting  under  meastires  of 
repression,  they  took  their  part  in  the  victory- 
over  Great  Britain. 

At  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  Marblehead 
was  the  foremost  fishing  town  and  Gloucester 
followed  in  its  wake.  Plymouth  and  Chatham 
were  the  Old  Colony  centers,  Plymouth  having 
sixty  vessels  and  over  four  hundred  men,  and 
Chatham  about  half  as  many  of  each.  In 
1783,  however,  at  the  close  of  the  war,  Chat- 
ham had  only  four  or  five  fishing  craft,  but  of 
sorrowing  mothers  and  lonely  widows  the  town 
was  full. 

The  Plymouth  fisheries  likewise  were  small 
at  the  time  of  peace,  but  by  the  year  1800, 
seventeen  years  later,  there  was  a  good  meas- 
ure of  revival.  Cod,  mackerel,  and  herring 
were  caught,  two  miles  of  the  Plymouth  shore 
were  lined  with  marks  of  the  enterprise,  while 
Spain,  Portugal,  and  the  Atlantic  Islands 
afforded  the  markets. 

Provincetown  had  more  than  thirty  vessels 
in  1802,  and  the  sailings  reached  as  far  as  New- 
foundland and  Labrador.  At  the  same  time 
Wellfleet  had  a  goodly  fleet  in  the  cod,  mack- 
erel and  oyster  trade.  Duxbury  also  was 
engaged  in  codfishing  and  in  building  ships. 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    187 

In  the  recovery  of  fishing  after  the  Revolution, 
Plymouth  held  third  place  from  1786  to  1790, 
Marblehead  and  Gloucester  being  in  the  lead. 

The  future  of  fishing  on  these  shores  was, 
however,  by  no  means  assured  in  those  years, 
for  in  1789,  Fisher  Ames  found  it  necessary  to 
champion  this  industry  of  New  England,  lest 
it  go  down  to  ruin.  Answering  the  hypotheti- 
cal question — ''Why,  if  the  business  is  so  bad, 
do  they  not  quit  it?"  he  quoted  words  often 
said  in  the  East  in  those  days,  of  the  people  of 
the  Cape,  ''They  are  too  poor  to  live  there,  and 
are  too  poor  to  remove." 

That  the  Cape  fishermen  did  not  stick  to 
their  nets  and  hooks  is  asserted  over  and  over 
by  McFarland  in  his  history  of  the  New  Eng- 
land fisheries.  There  was  little  movement 
among  this  class  to  lands  beyond  the  AUe- 
ghenies.  Rather  did  they  hug  the  sea,  and 
seek  out  the  recesses  of  the  fiorded  coasts  of 
Maine,  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  and  of 
Labrador. 

The  next  great  expansion  and  decline  took 
place  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  it  went 
together  with  the  wide  distribution  of  shipping 
among  the  New  England  seaports,  both  great 
and  small.  The  Plymouth  district,  which  took 
in  not  only  Plymouth,  but  Kingston,  Duxbury, 
and  Scituate,  averaged  almost  seventy  ships 


188  Cape  Cod 

engaged  in  codfishing  after  1816,  and  this  con- 
dition endured  for  half  a  century,  or  until 
about  1 866.  Plymouth  had  her  mackerel  trade 
also,  but  for  a  lesser  time.  Thousands  of 
barrels  were  taken  in  1830,  but  the  business 
had  subsided  by  1850. 

Wellfieet  had  a  large  mackerel  fleet,  begin- 
ning in  1826,  and  employing  seventy-five 
schooners  as  late  as  i860,  continuing  also  for 
years  after  that  date.  During  a  similar  period, 
there  were  large  interests  in  whale,  cod  and 
mackerel  in  Provincetown.  All  through  the 
middle  of  the  century,  Chatham,'  Dennis  and 
Harwich  developed  in  mackerel  as  the  cod  fell 
off.  Chatham  lost  her  codfishing  when  her 
harbor  became  shallowed  with  silt.  The 
larger  ships  could  not  use  the  port,  but  the 
smaller  mackerel  boats  continued  to  come  and 
go.  Mackerel  were  first  caught  for  salting  in 
181 8,  having  previously  been  mainly  used  for 
bait. 

There  was  great  decline  in  New  England 
fisheries  in  the  quarter  of  a  century  following 
1850,  especially  in  offshore  fishing.  With  this 
decline  was  largely  lost  the  nursery  of  our 
earlier  navy  and  the  foundation  of  our  mer- 
chant marine.  There  were  various  causes  of 
the  falling  off  in  New  England.  Middle  At- 
lantic oysters  were  going  to  the  Mississippi 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    189 

valley.  The  Great  Lakes  had  to  be  reckoned 
with  for  they  were  putting  large  supplies  of 
fish  on  the  markets  of  the  interior.  Salt  fish 
from  New  England  could  not  hold  their  place 
on  the  Pacific  Coast  when  the  western  home 
waters  abounded  in  halibut,  and  ran  red  with 
salmon.  The  railroads  and  cold  cars  at  first 
helped  the  New  England  industry  but  later 
overwhelmed  it  with  the  competition  of  remote 
waters.  Sardines  and  Canning  factories  on  the 
Maine  coast  did  their  part  in  cutting  away  the 
market  for  cod  and  mackerel. 

No  small  influence  in  the  waning  of  fishing 
was  the  upgrowth  of  summer  life  on  the  shore. 
Who  knows  now  that  Bar  Harbor  in  older  days 
was  just  a  fishing  station?  The  fishing  hut  has 
surrendered  to  the  summer  home,  while  the 
fisherman  serves  the  visitor,  gives  himself  to 
inshore  fishing,  and  watches  his  lobster  traps. 
He  is  content  to  leave  the  deep  seas,  for  rowing 
a  dory  or  driving  a  motorboat  on  sunshiny 
afternoons. 

An  elderly  gentleman  of  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  long  absent  from  the  Cape  but  never 
losing  his  love  of  it  or  his  devotion  to  his 
native  Wellfleet,  has  given  other  reasons  for 
the  changed  life  of  Cape  Cod.  According  to 
him,  one  element  in  the  change  was  the  break- 
ing-up  of  the  old  salt  industry.    The  decline  of 


I90  Cape  Cod 

mackerel  fishing  was  hastened  by  the  desertion 
of  the  coast  on  the  part  of  these  shy  fish. 
Seines  were  introduced,  and  this  had  the  inter- 
esting restJt  that  only  men  could  be  employed. 
There  was  little  further  use  for  boys,  who  can 
handle  lines  but  not  nets,  hence  the  boys  left 
the  Cape. 

There  was  also  much  unemployment  in  the 
winter  and  spring.  Even  good  and  able  yoimg 
men  could  not  get  work,  and  the  consequent 
loss  and  unrest  turned  their  steps  inland.  Not 
to  be  forgotten  also  were  the  dangers  of  the  sea. 
The  hazards  of  fishing,  and  the  himdreds  of 
widowed  women  left  prematurely  in  their 
lonely  struggle,  made  the  young  women  loth 
to  marry  seamen,  a  reluctance  in  which  their 
parents  fully  shared. 

Thus  we  come  down  to  our  day,  and  on  the 
Cape  one  hears  a  good  deal  about  mackerel 
and  very  little  about  cod.  The  mackerel  is 
first  in  the  public  eye  mainly  because  of  much 
legislation.  About  191 1,  the  mackerel  indus- 
try did  not  show  one  tenth  the  value  of  twen- 
ty-five years  previous.  Still  there  were  great 
possibilities,  this  being  the  mysterious  fish  of 
the  sea,  coming  and  going  by  age-long  instinct, 
causing  poverty  in  one  year,  and  bringing 
riches  in  the  next. 

One  who  has  read  Thoreau's  story  of  Prov- 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    191 

incetown  will  doubtless  keep  the  codfish  in 
his  memory  after  all  else  has  been  forgotten. 
The  codfish  is  entwined  in  the  older  history  of 
Barnstable  County,  and  is  memorialized  in  the 
name  of  the  Cape.  Our  historian  of  the  fish- 
eries has  put  into  a  single  paragraph  an  epitaph 
of  the  cod  which  should  be  denied  to  no  reader 
of  Cape  lore. 

^'Of  all  the  fish  of  the  sea,  none  is  dearer  to 
the  heart  of  the  New  Englander  than  the  cod- 
fish. History  has  claimed  it  for  her  own,  and 
thrown  a  halo  about  its  name.  For  years  the 
cod  held  supreme  sway  over  all  others  of  its 
kind.  This  was  due  to  no  sentiment  arising 
from  historic  associations.  The  life  of  the 
colonist  was  staked  upon  the  economic  impor- 
tance of  the  codfish.  The  Revolution  wit- 
nessed a  struggle  in  diplomacy  in  which  the 
codfish  was  the  central  figure.  Our  war  for 
independence,  upon  the  sea,  was  won  by  cod- 
fishermen  from  the  Capes  and  Banks.  The 
cod  tells  'of  commerce,  diplomacy,  war;  of 
victories  won  in  all  three  fields.'  While  the 
cod  occupies  so  completely  the  foremost  place 
in  our  fisheries  until  the  second  war  with  Great 
Britain,  there  arises  in  the  more  recent  history, 
consideration  for  other  fish.*' 

We  are  not  to  suppose  that  fishing  has 
passed  from  the  Old  Colony.     There  are  no 


192  Cape  Cod 

ports  on  the  inner  or  outer  shores  where  one 
may  not  find  some  signs  of  it.  Docks  are  de- 
caying, boats  are  small,  and  fishermen  are  few, 
but  they  are  there,  and  will  be  there  as  long  as 
salt  water  is  an  abounding  home  of  living 
things. 

But  fishing  is  specialized  and  localized,  and 
no  longer  is  the  chief  occupation  or  the  con- 
suming thought  of  the  majority.  Looking  out 
from  Provincetown  or  Truro,  Wellfieet  or 
Brewster,  one  sees  structures  that  look  like 
light  stockades,  in  the  shallow  waters.  They 
are  the  fish  weirs,  and  one  may  wade  out  to 
the  fisherman's  small  craft  in  the  early  morn- 
ing and  go  to  the  drawing  of  the  net.  The 
catch  is  large  or  it  is  light,  but  the  shining 
mackerel  will  be  a  part  of  it,  with  butterfish 
and  hake  and  other  kinds  about  which  the 
landsman  knows  little.  Pretty  surely  there 
will  be  some  squid,  which  are  sold  for  bait  to 
the  offshore  fishermen,  and  some  huge  flat 
skates,  which  rather  cruelly  will  be  pitchforked 
into  the  Bay  for  the  gulls  to  quarrel  over.  The 
catch  is  often  small,  but  it  may  tax  belief,  as 
when  four  hundred  barrels  of  mackerel  were 
snared  in  a  single  weir  not  many  years  ago. 

The  weirs  at  Brewster  are  shaped  like  a 
shepherd's  crook.  The  fish  run  out  with  the 
tide  along  the  shaft  of  the  crook,  and  rim  into 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    193 

the  hook.  The  tide  here  leaves  about  two  miles 
of  the  Bay  bottom  bare,  and  the  fish  rarely  find 
their  way  out  of  the  weirs.  They  are  carried 
out  in  wagons,  and  sent  by  train  to  Boston. 

One  sees  a  number  of  large  buildings  on  the 
shore  at  Provincetown,  which  have  been  erect- 
ed in  recent  years,  as  the  older  fishing  habits 
have  passed  away.  They  are  the  refrigerating 
plants,  of  which  Provincetown  has  several,  and 
North  Truro,  Yarmouth,  Barnstable  and 
Chatham  each  one.  They  may  receive  the 
catch  of  the  weirs,  or  such  cargoes  of  offshore 
fish  as  do  not  go  to  Gloucester  or  Boston. 

Another  sign  of  the  fishing  industry  has  just 
now  appeared.  To  the  apprehension  of  Prov- 
incetown, as  it  would  seem,  the  selectmen  of 
Truro  have  permitted  the  construction  of  a 
factory  for  fish  waste  on  East  Harbor,  close 
to  the  dimes  which  environ  Provincetown. 
Here  the  fish  waste  may  be  transmuted  into 
fertilizers  and  oils.  Who  knows  but  the  fac- 
tory, proving  possibly  a  better  scavenger  than 
the  gulls,  may  turn  out  a  boon  rather  than  a 
curse  to  the  surfless  strand  of  Provincetown? 

The  cod  and  mackerel  are  at  home  in  the 
salt  waters  and  they  stay  there,  though  they 
roam  widely.  The  herring  has  a  different  no- 
tion of  existence,  and  varies  its  program  with 
incursions  along  any  thin  line  of  fresh  water 

13 


194  Cape  Cod 

which  will  conduct  it  to  lake  or  pond,  in  the 
months  of  May  and  June.  The  herring  has 
attached  its  name  to  a  number  of  these  inland 
waters  on  the  Cape,  and  does  not  allow  itself 
to  be  forgotten  in  the  routine  of  the  seasons. 
One  would  not  search  far  in  the  records  of  the 
towns,  or  attend  many  sessions  of  some  town 
meetings  without  finding  interesting  records, 
now  and  then  of  stirring  contests  over  herring 
rights  and  privileges. 

The  outlet  of  the  noble  lake  of  Mashpee  is 
a  swift -running  brook,  narrow  enough  to  jump. 
Below  the  road  that  crosses  the  brook  a  short 
distance  from  the  lake  were  piled  two  himdred 
barrels  of  salted  herring,  baking  harmlessly 
they  said,  in  the  August  sun,  while  they  await- 
ed the  sending  to  market.  There  was  a  plat- 
form with  planks  on  edge  for  a  rim  and  into 
that  enclosure  the  net  dtimped  its  holding, 
after  spanning  the  six-foot  channel. 

So  congested  is  the  run  that  a  parallel  chan- 
nel was  cut  a  few  feet  away  to  afford  a  double 
chance  at  the  throng  of  herring,  hurrying  up 
to  the  big  lake.  And  a  short  distance  below  on 
this  brook,  which  is  Mashpee  River,  were  more 
hundreds  of  barrels,  a  thousand  in  all  on  the 
little  stream  making  a  single  season's  catch. 
Any  resident  of  the  town  has  the  right  to  catch 
the  herring,  except  when,  as  is  not  uncommon. 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    195 

the  town  authorities  farm  out  the  herring 
privilege  for  the  general  profit. 

When  the  Cape  Cod  CanUl  was  put  through, 
it  virtually  replaced  the  Montimet  River. 
What  is  left  of  the  upper  stream  runs  from 
Great  Herring  Pond,  in  Bourne,  into  the  canal. 
The  granite  blocks  on  the  canal  borders  hin- 
dered the  coming  of  the  alewives  and  injured 
the  fisheries.  A  correspondence  opened  in 
191 7,  led  to  the  joint  action  of  the  Canal  Com- 
pany, of  the  Town  of  Bourne,  and  of  the  State 
Commission  of  Fisheries  and  Game,  by  which 
a  suitable  fishway  was  constructed  between  the 
canal  and  the  river,  thus  restoring  favorable 
conditions. 

The  freshwater  fish  of  the  Cape,  while  in  no 
sense  affording  an  industry,  have  since  Daniel 
Webster's  day,  and  no  doubt  long  before, 
given  ample  sport  to  lovers  of  the  rod  and  line. 
Trout  and  bass  still  love  the  pure  waters  of  the 
Old  Colony  lakes  and  streams,  and  some  stock- 
ing of  the  ponds  is  said  to  be  undertaken  by 
the  Fish  Commission  at  Woods  Hole,  and  there 
is  a  hatchery  in  Sandwich  for  stocking  with 
brook  trout  and  the  landlocked  salmon. 

Something  more  may  be  added  concerning 
that  kind  of  fishery  which  so  far  as  New  Eng- 
land is  concerned  has  gone  into  the  past,  and 
is  already  by  most  forgotten.     Tower,  in  his 


196  Cape  Cod 

history  of  New  England  Whaling,  quotes 
Thatcher's  history  of  Plymouth  regarding  the 
early  settlers'  doubts  about  staying  on  the 
Cape.  One  of  the  main  reasons  for  staying  was 
the  opportunity  to  fish,  for  ''large  whales  of 
the  best  kind  for  oil  and  bone  came  daily 
alongside  and  played  about  the  ship." 

Secretary  Randolph,  in  1688,  sent  a  letter 
to  England  in  which  he  said,  ''Now  Plymouth 
Colony  have  great  profit  by  whale  killing.  I 
believe  it  will  be  one  of  our  best  returns,  now 
beaver  and  peltry  fayle  us."  Down  to  1700 
no  town  outside  of  the  Old  Colony,  except 
Nantucket,  was  taking  whales,  and  Nantucket 
was  a  disciple  of  the  Cape  in  this  industry. 
The  whaling  always  began  with  drift  whales, 
and  this  led  to  boat  whaling,  a  fact  true  of  the 
Massachusetts  settlements,  of  Nantucket,  and 
of  the  eastern  end  of  Long  Island.  A  Nan- 
tucket whaler,  blown  out  to  sea  in  1727,  en- 
countered sperm  whales,  and  this  event  broad- 
ened the  industry  from  drift  and  boat  whaling 
and  sent  the  whalers  to  the  deep.  The  Boston 
News  Letter  of  1727  refers  to  the  change  from 
shore  to  open  sea  as  having  now  come  to  the 
Cape  towns,  thus  following  in  a  few  years  the 
new  example  of  Nantucket. 

By  1737  Provincetown  was  fitting  a  dozen 
ships  for  the  far  northern  waters  of  Davis 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    197 

Strait.  This  enterprise  took  from  the  end 
town  of  the  Cape  all  but  about  a  dozen  of  its 
men.  Whaling  continued  on  the  Cape  to  the 
Revolution,  at  whose  beginning  Wellfleet, 
Barnstable  and  Falmouth  had  thirty-six  ves- 
sels, mostly  in  northern  waters.  New  Bedford 
appeared  in  the  industry  not  more  than  fifteen 
years  before  the  Revolution. 

The  business  was  about  destroyed  as  was 
other  fishing  at  the  end  of  the  war,  and  the 
towns  were  well-nigh  bereft  of  vessels  and  of 
all  other  equipment.  The  whales,  however, 
had  had  a  rest,  had  grown  more  nimierous 
and  more  tame,  and  there  was  some  revival 
in  which  Wellfleet  and  Plymouth  had  a  share. 
There  was,  however,  no  complete  recovery  un- 
til the  War  of  18 12  had  passed.  Then  growth 
began,  coming  to  its  height  in  the  forties,  with 
about  six  hundred  vessels  in  the  Atlantic, 
Pacific  and  Indian  oceans. 

After  1830  regular  fleets  went  out  from  Fal- 
mouth and  Plymouth,  Provincetown  coming 
in  strongly  somewhat  later.  Since  1895  Bos- 
ton, New  Bedford  and  Provincetown  have 
been  the  only  ports  at  which  even  a  remnant 
of  whaling  survived.  Some  readers  would  like 
to  know  the  years  of  last  sailings  for  whales 
from  the  various  Cape  towns.  Here  they  are — 
Barnstable,    1846;   Truro,    1852;   Falmouth, 


198  Cape  Cod 

1859;  Sandwich,  1862;  Wellfleet,  1867.  In  a 
short  quarter  of  a  century  the  Cape  lost  all 
its  whaling  except  from  Provincetown. 

In  1906,  New  Bedford  had  twenty-four 
ships,  San  Francisco  fourteen,  and  Province- 
town  three.  Six  whalers  are  even  at  the  pres- 
ent time  assessed  in  Provincetown,  but  they 
fit  out  and  land  at  New  Bedford.  The  Civil 
War,  like  the  wars  of  1776  and  1812,  broke  up 
the  whaling  in  destructive  fashion  and  the  min- 
eral oil  of  Pennsylvania  assured  the  end. 

The  seas  are  vast,  and  they  so  abound  in 
life  that  we  stop  with  our  conservation  ideas 
at  their  borders.  Yet  we  have  seen  how  even 
the  whales  profited  by  something  like  a  closed 
season,  widely  as  they  roam  and  feed  and  mul- 
tiply. But  conservation  is  needed  at  the  shore- 
line, and  this  is  the  burden  and  cry  of  those 
who  report  each  year  to  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts  on  the  state  of  the  mollusk. 
It  is  all  summed  up  in  the  phrase,  ''the  fast- 
declining  shellfish  industries." 

Cape  Cod  is  the  dividing  line  between  the 
northern  and  southern  types  of  marine  life. 
Here  the  two  faunas  mingle,  and  hence  it  is 
that  on  the  Cape  the  northern  or  soft  clam 
and  the  southern  hardshell  clam  or  quahaug 
overlap.  The  bays  and  estuaries  of  the  Cape, 
like  those  of  the  rest  of  Massachusetts,  are 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    199 

favorable  for  these  edible  shellfish,  but  thou- 
sands of  once  productive  acres  are  now  barren. 

The  official  writer  thinks  that  the  forefathers 
who  evinced  such  comfortable  satisfaction  in 
''sucking  the  abundance  of  the  seas"  were 
extremely  wasteful.  The  production,  indeed, 
was  twice  as  much  in  1907  as  in  1879,  but  this 
does  not  mean  an  increased  natural  supply. 
It  does  mean  that  high  prices  took  more  men 
and  more  money  into  the  work,  conditions 
which  can  but  hasten  the  process  of  destruc- 
tion. 

One  writer  cites  specific  cases  of  decline  on 
the  Cape,  as  of  the  oyster  at  Wellfleet,  the  sea 
clam  at  Dennis  and  Chatham,  the  scallop  in 
Buzzards  Bay  and  at  Barnstable,  and  the  clam 
and  quahaug  on  many  Old  Colony  shores  from 
Duxbury  around  to  Buzzards  Bay.  The  order 
of  shellfish  departure  is  simple,  and  unless 
ample  things  are  done,  inevitable.  It  is  heavy 
demand,  then  over-fishing  and  decline.  A  fur- 
ther means  of  destruction  is  the  pollution  of 
shore  waters  with  sewage  and  factory  waste. 

Plymouth  is  the  northern  limit  of  the  hard- 
shell clam  or  quahaug.  The  largest  fisheries 
on  the  Old  Colony  coast  are  at  Wellfleet,  Or- 
leans, Eastham  and  in  Buzzards  Bay,  but 
there  is  a  decline  almost  everywhere.  An  evi- 
dence of  the  waning  of  the  industry  is  the 


200  Cape  Cod 

employment  of  sixty-foot  rakes,  to  raise  the 
bivalves  from  that  depth  of  water.  The  small 
sizes,  or  ''little  necks"  are  taken  because  the 
market  demands  them,  the  big  ones  are  not 
left  for  spawning,  and  so  the  destruction  goes 
on. 

The  adoption  of  cultural  methods,  or  '*qua- 
haug  farming"  is  urged  as  the  remedy,  and 
the  town  laws  in  the  quahaug  centers  now  look 
in  this  direction.  High-power  seine  boats  are 
now  used  ofE  Orleans  in  the  deep  water  qua- 
haug fishing  that  prevails  in  that  shore.  The 
main  season  runs  from  April  to  November,  and 
fits  itself  to  the  winter  season  of  taking 
scallops. 

Those  who  are  devoted  to  some  special  cor- 
ner of  the  Cape  will  find  in  the  reports  of  the 
game  commission  the  hard-clam  story  in  de- 
tail for  every  town,  including  a  half-dozen 
pages  on  Wellfieet,  the  ''seat  of  the  finest 
quahaug  industry  in  Massachusetts,"  there 
being  twenty-five  hundred  acres,  nearly  the 
whole  harbor,  save  where  there  are  oyster 
grants.  Here  the  laying  out  of  the  plots  is  said 
to  have  aroused  the  usual  hostility  between 
the  oystermen  and  the  quahaugers. 

Scalloping  is  a'southshore  industry  on  the 
Cape,  centering  mainly  in  Chatham,  Harwich, 
Dennis  and  in  Hyannis  Bay,  and  Cotuit  in 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    201 

the  town  of  Barnstable.  Buzzards  Bay,  Mon- 
ument Beach  and  Cataumet  are  other  haunts 
of  this  graceful  bivalve.  Dennis  has  over  two 
thousand  acres  of  scallop  ground,  a  field  which 
is  likely  to  produce  in  one  year  and  be  barren 
the  next. 

In  1904-05  Dennis  had,  so  one  reporter  says, 
one  of  the  largest  beds  of  scallops  ever  known 
in  Massachusetts.  Profits  ran  high  and  ex- 
pectation likewise,  but  the  next  spring  all  the 
leftovers  of  this  short-lived  creature  were  dead 
and  the  catch  of  that  season  had  to  be  dredged 
from  deeper  waters. 

The  oyster  business  is  carried  on  with  more 
system  and  greater  success  than  the  other 
shellfish  ventures.  It  is  also  a  southshore  in- 
dustry on  the  Cape  and,  indeed,  in  the  State 
of  Massachusetts.  Exceptions  on  Cape  Cod 
are  the  oyster  grants  of  Wellfleet,  Eastham 
and  Orleans. 

In  early  days  there  were  many  natural  oys- 
ter beds,  as  at  Wellfleet,  where  the  primitive 
settlers  fotmd  enough  for  themselves  and  for 
some  outside  trade.  A  few  native  oysters  are 
still  found  in  Harwich,  at  Centerville  and  in 
Falmouth.  No  natural  oysters,  however,  are 
in  these  days  secured  for  market  use.  The 
destruction  of  these  beds  was  due  to  overfish- 
ing and  the  pollution  of  the  waters.   The  natu- 


202  Cape  Cod 

ral  bed  at  Wellfleet  was  exterminated  by  the 
year  1775.  The  early  oystermen  took  all  the 
large  oysters,  leaving  none  for  spawning,  and 
they  did  not  restore  to  the  beds  the  empty 
shells,  which  furnish  the  best  surfaces  for  oy- 
ster "spat/'  The  few  natural  beds  which  are 
still  in  existence,  are  preserved  through  spawn 
from  oyster  grants,  and  hence  it  is  confidently 
believed  that  the  adoption  of  a  farming  system 
has  saved  the  creature  from  absolute  extinc- 
tion in  Massachusetts  waters. 

Following  the  period  of  natural  oysters 
which  lasted  from  1620  to  1840,  there  was  an 
interval  of  thirty  years  of  bedding  small  oys- 
ters brought  from  the  South,  but  the  grant 
system  has  prevailed  since  1870.  One  of  the 
chief  Cape  centers  is  at  Wellfleet,  yet  even 
here  the  industry  is  on  the  decline.  The  qua- 
hauger,  it  is  claimed,  is  busy  in  town  affairs, 
and  is  opposed  to  renewing  the  oyster  leases 
when  they  run  out.  Indeed  Wellfleet  supports 
a  quahaug  club,  enrolling  about  all  the  diggers 
of  this  mollusk.  Poor,  quiescent  oysters  and 
clams — they  are  set  against  each  other  by  that 
higher  order  of  being  who  in  his  ascent  has 
lost  their  gentle  art  of  minding  their  own 
business. 

Chatham  goes  considerably  into  oyster  rais- 
ing, but  the  great  oyster  town  of  Massachu- 


The  Harvest  of  the  Waters    203 

setts  is  Barnstable,  whose  oyster  grounds  are 
at  Cotuit,  Marston's  Mills,  and  Osterville, 
Cotuit  being  first  in  importance.  Here  the 
Bay  is  said  to  have  remarkably  pure  waters, 
and  a  clean  sand  bottom,  producing  a  specially 
bright-  and  clear  shell.  There  are  small  grants 
in  Falmouth,  in  Waquoit  Bay.  This  town 
does  not,  however,  go  far  in  any  of  the  shell- 
fish industries. 

Unlike  the  oyster,  or  quahaug,  the  soft-shell 
clam,  or  "long  neck,"  dwells  along  the  north- 
em  shores  of  Massachusetts,  and  is  found  all 
the  way  from  Salisbury  and  Newburyport  to 
Salem,  Hingham,  Duxbury,  and  Plymouth, 
and  around  the  Bay  to  Provincetown.  It  also 
occurs  in  Buzzards  Bay  and  on  some  south 
shores  of  the  Cape.  Its  story  is  likewise  one 
of  decline,  although  immense  fields  of  tidal  flat 
invite  an  industry  that  has  almost  ceased. 
Much  the  same  is  true  of  Kingston  and  Plym- 
outh, where  in  early  days  the  sea  food  saved 
the  colonists  from  perishing. 

The  Virginian  cannot  forever  raise  tobacco 
on  the  same  bit  of  coastal  plain,  and  the  prairie 
farmer  finds  an  end  of  wheat  and  corn  from 
imrequited  soil.  Even  the  vast  and  elusive 
sea  must  be  treated  with  discretion.  No  doubt 
the  Cape  Codder  will  continue  to  dig  a  pail  of 
clams  for  his  supper,  and  the  picnicker  will  for 


204  Cape  Cod 

long  be  able  to  buy,  down  by  the  harbor,  a 
basket  of  oysters  in  the  shell  for  a  roasting 
bout  by  some  lake  in  the  Wellfieet  woods. 
But  when  he  goes  in  for  business,  the  Cape 
fisherman,  like  the  Cape  farmer,  must  put  his 
wits  into  the  game  and  work  and  forecast  in 
the  long  range. 

Conserve  and  be  mindful  in  good  conscience 
of  future  generations.  They  will  want  oysters 
and  quahaugs,  mackerel  and  cod,  and  they 
may  need  even  whales.  The  Mayflower  fa- 
thers could  suck  the  abundance  of  the  seas 
but  their  children  proudly  looking  over  their 
genealogies  in  the  eighth  and  ninth  generations 
must  mind  their  soils  and  their  sea  bottoms. 
It  is  a  delicate  task  to  live  well  in  relation  to 
the  earth  mother  and  in  due  regard  for  all 
her  children. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ROADS  AND  WATERWAYS 

Cape  Cod  is  neighborly  to  chebeaten  tracks 
of  the  ocean.  Nobska  Light  is  on  the  south 
shore  at  Woods  Hole.  Here  converges  the 
coastwise  traffic  of  Boston,  New  York,  and  the 
South,  here  come  ships  from  Buzzards  Bay 
and  the  Canal,  from  Nantucket  Sound  and  the 
outside  of  the  Cape,  from  Long  Island  Sound — 
thirty  thousand  of  them  in  all,  passing  the 
light  in  the  space  of  a  year.  The  joy  of  the 
cliffs  of  Truro  is  in  the  solitary  grandeur  of 
the  ocean,  but  that  joy  is  tempered,  human- 
ized, and  made  kindly,  the  solitude  is  broken, 
for  one  sees  sails  by  day  and  lights  at  night — 
fisher  craft,  freighters  puffing  through  solitary 
funnels,  and  a  mile  of  coal  barges,  three,  some- 
times four,  spaced  a  thousand  feet  or  more, 
following  a  tug  whose  power  seems  out  of  all 
harmony  with  its  size.  The  barges  are  high 
on  the  water,  going  south,  or  with  hulls  deep 
down,  aiming  their  black  cargoes  at  Boston, 
Salem,  Newburyport,Portsmouth,  or  Portland. 

205 


2o6  Cape  Cod 

Ships  are  few  at  Plymouth.  One  may  look 
out  all  day  over  the  rock,  seeing  only  a  few 
diminutive  fishermen,  a  motorboat,  a  chance 
yacht  of  some  wealthy  pleasure  seeker,  and, 
if  in  summer,  the  daily  excursion  steamer  from 
Boston.  The  look  of  things  is  more  ocean-like 
if  one  goes  down  the  Cape  to  Provincetown. 
Fishing  was  small  at  Plymouth  and  out  of 
fishing  grew  the  larger  trading  life  of  the  Cape. 
Plymouth  stayed  by  its  agriculture  and  devel- 
oped its  manufactures  down  to  our  day.  It 
has  never  been  so  thoroughly  mixed  with  the 
ocean  as  the  narrow  and  exposed  foreland 
which  springs  from  it. 

Sandwich,  the  basal  old  town  of  the  Cape,  is 
somewhat  like  Plymouth,  and  is  said  to  be  less 
maritime  than  any  other  town  on  the  Cape. 
Surely  a  look  at  her  desolate  water  front  makes 
it  easy  to  believe  it,  and  there  is  evidence 
enough  that  manufacture  ruled  in  the  past  as 
farming  and  stmimer  resting  to-day.  Yet 
there  was  at  one  time  some  shipbuilding  here. 
And  Sandwich  is  credited  with  the  first  packet 
running  to  Boston,  a  service  maintained  for 
many  years,  until  the  venerable  town  saw  its 
first  steam  cars  in  1848. 

Woods  Hole,  let  it  be  remembered,  provides 
Falmouth  with  that  town's  most  important 
harbor,  a  haven  not  situated  to  favor  Boston 


Roads  and  Waterways         207 

trade,  but  a  central  shipping  place  for  New 
Bedford,  and  the  outer  islands,  wood  for  Nan- 
tucket having  loaded  many  a  boat  from  its 
docks.  Falmouth  had,  nevertheless,  a  worthy 
share  in  the  wide  trade  of  the  older  days. 
Sixty  vessels  were  owned  there  in  1800,  and 
their  sailings  reached,  for  fishing  and  the  coast- 
ing trade,  such  remote  regions  as  Belle  Isle, 
the  Southern  states  and  the  West  Indies. 

It  is  quite  within  the  range  of  possibilities 
to  look  out  over  the  broad  surfaces  of  Barn- 
stable Bay,  and  in  some  hours  not  see  so  much 
as  a  rowboat.  A  century  has  made  a  complete 
change  in  Barnstable's  mode  of  life.  The  old 
town  once  had  several  shipyards  in  which 
Boston  packets  were  built.  There  were  fre- 
quent trips  between  the  Cape  capital  and  the 
State  capital  in  1806,  and  there  was  little 
besides  marine  activity  in  1839,  the  time  of 
the  bicentennial  celebration.  There  were  two 
himdred  and  fifty  of  Barnstable's  citizens  who 
were  at  that  time  either  masters  or  mates 
of  vessels. 

The  Bay  State's  honored  jurist,  Chief  Jus- 
tice Shaw,  at  the  Barnstable  celebration, 
looked  out  on  Sandy  Neck  and  called  it  ''a 
range  of  sterile  sand  hills  interspersed  with  a 
few  patches  of  brown  woods  and  swamps,  and 
surroimded  by  marshes."     But  to  the  Cape 


208  Cape  Cod 

Cod  man  what  is  suggested? — the  "ocean  that 
lies  beyond,  the  field  of  his  industry  and  enter- 
prise, of  enjoyment  and  improvement,  even  of 
social  and  intellectual  improvement,  connect- 
ing him  with  all  lands,  art,  knowledge,  refine- 
ment, civilization.  The  land  and  the  sea  are 
alike  fertile  to  those  that  have  the  hardihood, 
the  skill,  the  enterprise  to  improve  them,  and 
the  hearts  to  enjoy  them." 

Such  is  the  glory  of  Barnstable's  history,  but 
a  new  chapter  is  in  the  writing  to-day,  less 
arousing  than  the  older  story,  more  in  the 
fields,  and  the  end  not  seen.  It  is  half  a  cen- 
tury since  Barnstable  retired  within  herself, 
for  the  great  traffic  had  ceased  at  the  time  of 
the  Civil  War. 

Every  town,  going  farther  out  on  the  Cape, 
was  through  and  through  marine.  None  of 
them  needed  any  solicitude,  as  Thoreau  ex- 
pressed it  for  himself,  about  ''getting  the  sea 
into"  them.  Yarmouth,  Dennis,  and  Brew- 
ster all  front  on  the  innermost  comer  of  the 
Bay.  None  of  them  have  harborage  to  boast 
of,  but  what  they  had  was  suited  to  the  modest 
craft  of  the  old  time.  These  little  havens 
were  never  idle.  Dennis  had  in  1837  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  skippers  sailing  from  American 
ports.  And  Dennis  had  been  running  boats 
to  Boston  almost  a  hundred  years  at  that  time. 


Roads  and  Waterways        209 

Yarmouth  had  her  regular  Boston  packets 
before  1800,  but  their  trafBc  was  at  an  end 
in  1870. 

One  wonders  if  Brewster's  slumbers  are 
ever  broken  after  the  summer  automobile  has 
run  its  course.  Innocent  of  smoke  or  factory, 
setting  a  few  nets  in  her  fish  weirs,  and  living 
in  gracious  old  mansions,  under  magnificent 
arborescent  growths  in  that  poor  land  in  which 
*' trees  do  not  flourish" — something  has  hap- 
pened in  Brewster,  or  has  ceased  to  happen. 
The  time  is  no  more  when  she  had  more  sea 
captains  on  foreign  voyages  than  any  other 
town  in  the  United  States.  No  doubt,  those 
foreign  voyages  account  for  the  mansions. 
None  would  dispute  Freeman  who  says  that 
Brewster  was  noted  for  shipmasters,  having 
not  much  fishing  but  vast  coasting  and  foreign 
trade,  and  adding  an  observation  which  if  not 
startling  is  safely  veracious,  ''one  of  the  most 
agreeable  towns  on  the  Cape." 

All  of  Harwich's  ocean  contact  is  on  the 
south  shore,  but  the  town  had  shipping  enough 
to  cause  someone  to  assert  that  her  retired 
sea  captains  were  as  thick  as  cranberries.  If, 
as  we  suppose,  the  cranberries  of  Harwich 
were  intended,  no  more  could  be  said. 

Even  more  fully  absorbed  by  the  sea,  were 
the  outer  towns.  In  Orleans  the  land  was 
14 


210  Cape  Cod 

tended  by  old  men  and  small  boys,  all  between 
the  ages  of  twelve  and  forty-five  being  occu- 
pied on  the  sea.  Adjoining  Orleans  is  East- 
ham,  whose  asparagus  fields  and  coast  swamps 
offer  no  hint  of  ships,  yet  the  town  boasted 
coasters  that  in  summer  brought  lumber  from 
Maine  and  in  winter  voyaged  to  the  West 
Indies.  Both  Orleans  and  Eastham  shared 
in  the  useful  traffic  of  delivering  Cape  salt  on 
Boston  wharves. 

Chatham  was  less  favorably  placed  for  the 
Boston  traffic,  which  she  maintained  mostly 
by  inside  routes  through  Brewster  and  Or- 
leans. Chatham  was  well  situated  for  Nan- 
tucket and  New  Bedford  trade  and  ran  boats 
even  to  New  York.  Wellfleet  and  Truro  could 
not  escape  their  shipping  destiny,  while  the 
sailing  ship  ruled  the  seas.  The  Truro  men 
were  especially  exposed  to  sea  dangers.  All 
were  of  that  occupation,  at  home  in  a  narrow 
land,  with  dangerous  shores,  and  often  lost  in 
wrecks,  and  in  heroic  efforts  of  rescue.  There 
was  much  traffic  with  Boston,  but  the  silting 
of  the  harbor  of  Pamet  and  the  decline  of 
fishing  ended  the  business  before  the  railway 
was  extended  so  far  out.  Yet  in  1830  Truro 
boasted  a  schooner  whose  cabin  was  fitted 
with  birdseye  and  mahogany  and  himg  with 
silk  draperies. 


Roads  and  Waterways        211 

Provincetown  did  not  begin  its  larger  trade 
until  some  years  after  the  War  of  1812,  but 
has  maintained  importance  as  a  haven,  while 
all  other  Cape  ports  save  Woods  Hole  have 
passed  into  quietude.  Fishing  will  always 
bring  some  shipping  into  Provincetown  har- 
bor, the  navy  is  likely  to  use  it  in  times  of 
peace,  and  sure  to  come  in  days  of  war,  and 
all  ships  which  ply  the  adjoining  waters  may 
take  refuge  from  storm. 

The  arrival  of  the  packet  in  the  early  half 
of  the  last  century  was  the  excitement  of  the 
time,  bringing  the  news,  and  bringing  also 
Cape  sailors  whose  real  voyages  began  and 
ended  at  Boston.  There  was  keen  rivalry  for 
speed  among  the  packets  of  Barnstable,  Yar- 
mouth and  the  other  towns.  There  were 
packets  rimning  before  1800,  but  the  adoption 
of  regular  sailings  belongs  almost  wholly  to 
the  nineteenth  century,  coming  to  an  end  with 
the  advent  of  the  Old  Colony  Railway. 

The  elderly  man,  already  quoted,  who  had 
spent  his  youth  on  Cape  Cod,  in  a  commimi- 
cation  of  1897,  says  that  before  he  left  Well- 
fleet  in  1852,  he  saw  at  one  time  eighty  sail  of 
the  most  perfectly  constructed  vessels  of  their 
kind  in  the  world  riding  at  anchor  in  that  port. 
He  returned  after  forty-three  years  and  looked 
out  from  Indian  Hill  to  see  the  waters  as  bare 


212  Cape  Cod 

as  when  the  Mayflower  shallop  passed  the  posi- 
tion of  Billingsgate  Light  in  search  of  a  per- 
manent home  for  the  Leyden  Pilgrims. 
Wharves  were  decaying,  the  fishermen's  cot- 
tages were  falling  in,  and  in  the  town  Italian 
villas  and  English  houses  were  replacing  the 
old  Cape  cottages.  Truly,  in  a  recent  summer 
afternoon  in  Truro,  on  a  walk  to  the  ancient 
cemetery,  did  the  now  venerable  daughter  of  a 
still  more  venerable  sea  captain  say,  ''Cape 
Cod  ain't  what  it  used  to  be;  it's  going  down 
fast." 

The  changes  of  the  Civil  War  threw  the 
young  men  into  other  than  Cape  business. 
Domestic  coast  trade  took  the  population  to 
the  south  shore,  small  sloops  and  schooners 
gave  way  to  large  craft,  machinery  displaced 
men,  and  fishing  concentrated  in  Boston, 
Gloucester  and  Provincetown.  Emigrants 
poured  out  to  Maine,  the  Connecticut  Valley, 
the  Middle  States,  the  Prairies  and  California. 

Often  quoted,  but  deserving  a  place  in  every 
memorial  of  old  Cape  days,  no  words  will  ever 
say  more  eloquently  than  these  what  that  far- 
flung  life  was.  They  were  spoken  by  Dr. 
Palfrey  in  his  Barnstable  oration  in  1839 — 
''Wherever,  over  the  world,  you  see  the  stars 
and  stripes  floating,  you  may  have  good  hope 
that  beneath  them  someone  will  be  found  who 


Roads  and  Waterways        213 

can  tell  you  the  soundings  of  Barnstable,  or 
Wellfleet,  or  Chatham  harbor."  Another 
Cape  writer  cites  as  suitable  to  his  native 
shores,  Burke's  tribute  to  old  Yarmouth  on 
the  North  Sea — "No  sea  but  what  is  vexed  by 
their  fisheries,  no  climate  that  is  not  witness 
to  their  toils." 

A  shipmaster  twenty  years  ago  told  a  won- 
dering lone  passenger  of  how  he  must  sail  by 
watch  and  compass  the  tortuous  and  rocky 
course  on  the  return  journey  from  lona  to 
Oban  south  of  the  Island  of  Mull.  But  no 
stem  coast  was  perhaps  ever,  or  anywhere, 
more  hazardous  than  the  sea  borders  around 
Cape  Cod.  There  is  an  average  duration  of 
fog  on  this  coast  of  forty-five  days  in  the  year. 
Anyone  knows  what  this  means  who  has  spent 
weeks  or  months  imder  the  Cape's  greatest 
light  and  has  heard  the  low  roar  of  its  fog- 
horn day  and  night. 

The  tidal  currents  are  variable,  and  the  bot- 
toms rapidly  change  in  a  region  where  so  much 
sand  is  suppHed  to  the  waves  and  readily 
shifted  to  a  prodigious  extent  in  single  storms. 
There  are  extensive  and  dangerous  shoals  far 
out  and  reaching  to  the  Nantucket  light  ship. 
Most  of  the  larger  vessels  go  wholly  outside  of 
the  shoals,  and  in  a  long  week's  time  the  so- 
journer at  Siasconset  might  not  see  a  single 


214  Cape  Cod 

ship,  or  if  he  did,  more  than  likely  it  would  be 
in  the  service  of  the  United  States  Coast 
Survey.  ^ 

The  alternative  sailing  is  through  Nantucket 
Sound,  entered  or  left  by  a  narrow  and  sharply 
turning  course  through  the  shoals,  endangered 
by  fogs  and  cross  currents.  No  place  of  refuge 
is  available  between  Provincetown  and  Vine- 
yard Haven.  No  other  part  of  the  American 
coast  has  seen  so  many  shipwrecks  in  the  past 
fifty  years.  From  1875  to  1903  there  were 
six  hundred  and  eighty-seven  shipwrecks  on 
or  near  the  Cape.  More  than  one  himdred 
lives  were  lost,  nearly  two  himdred  of  the  ships 
were  not  saved,  and  the  property  loss  was  more 
than  two  million  dollars. 

From  1907  to  191 7,  there  were  one  hundred 
and  fifty-six  wrecks  on  the  ocean  side  of  Cape 
Cod.  If  we  consider  the  Nantucket  Shoals, 
the  island  and  the  sound,  and  Martha's  Vine- 
yard and  its  sound,  there  were  in  that  period 
of  ten  years  casualties  involving  two  hundred 
and  fifty-five  sailing  vessels,  and  seventy-one 
steamships,  or  in  all  three  hundred  and  twen- 
ty-six salt-water  craft.  Here  the  loss  was 
thirty-two  lives,  and  in  property  more  than 
one  and  a  half -million  dollars.  In  the  single 
year  1909,  on  the  exposed  face  of  the  Cape, 
alone,  there  were  twenty-two  wrecks.    About 


Roads  and  Waterways        215 

the  same  number  of  ships  met  disaster  in  each 
of  the  years  191 1,  1912  and  1913. 

Means  of  safety  have  long  been  taken,  grow- 
ing in  perfection  to  the  present  time,  though 
no  human  precaution  can  curb  the  sea  or  put 
its  dwellers  beyond  hazard.  A  lighthouse  was 
erected  in  Plymouth  Harbor  about  1770,  but 
for  long  around  the  Cape,  the  sailors  had 
learned  by  day,  at  least,  to  guide  their  course 
by  hilltops,  windmills  and  the  church  steeples. 

The  Reverend  Levi  Whitman  thus  wrote  to 
the  Reverend  James  Freeman  on  the  need  of 
a  light  at  the  Clay  Pounds,  where  Highland 
Light  now  is.  ''That  mountain  of  clay  in 
Truro  seems  to  have  been  erected  in  the  midst 
of  sand  hills  by  the  God  of  nature  on  purpose 
for  the  foundation  of  a  lighthouse,  which,  if  it 
could  be  obtained  in  time,  no  doubt  would 
save  millions  of  property  and  thousands  of 
lives.  Why  then  should  not  that  dark  chasm 
between  Nantucket  and  Cape  Ann  be  elimi- 
nated? Should  there  be  a  lighthouse  erected 
on  this  high  mountain,  it  would  be  discovered 
immediately  after  leaving  Nantucket  light  and 
would  be  a  safe  guide  roimd  the  Cape  into 
the  harbor." 

A  light  was  established  here  in  1797,  and 
since  June  12  of  that  year  the  beacon  has 
lighted  the  surrounding  waters  on  every  night 


2i6  Cape  Cod 

of  almost  a  century  and  a  quarter.  The  tower 
rises  about  eighty  feet  above  its  foundation, 
which  in  turn  is  about  one  hundred  and  forty 
feet  above  the  sea.  The  present  structure 
replaced  an  earlier  one  in  1857.  Whether 
looking  in  the  direction  of  Sankaty  Head,  or 
the  Boston  Light,  or  Cape  Ann,  the  distance 
for  each  is  a  little  more  than  forty  miles. 
Barring  a  foggy  atmosphere,  therefore,  the 
* 'chasm"  of  the  oldtime  clergyman  is  bridged, 
and  the  coastwise  mariner  would  always  be 
able  to  pick  up  one  of  these  lights.  The  light 
has  182,000  candle  power.  No  other  oil-burn- 
ing light  in  America  is  so  powerful,  and  its 
flashes  may,  it  is  said,  be  seen  under  favorable 
conditions,  at  a  distance  of  forty-five  miles. 

This  major  beacon  is  officially  the  Cape  Cod 
light,  but  the  local  name  is  used  more  com- 
monly, at  least  on  the  Cape.  Other  lights  fol- 
lowed at  short  intervals.  In  1806,  twelve 
acres  at  Chatham  were  given  to  the  govern- 
ment for  lights.  Race  Point  light  dates  from 
1 816,  and  the  light  on  Long  Point  at  the  very 
tip  of  the  Cape  was  set  up  in  1826.  Billings- 
gate Point,  off  Wellfleet,  in  the  Bay,  once  a  bit 
of  the  mainland,  now  an  island,  became  the 
site  of  a  light  in  1822.  Lights  were  installed 
at  Nauset  in  1838,  thus  giving  a  series  at  short 
intervals  for  all  the  outer  Cape  shore.    In  1849 


Roads  and  Waterways        217 

a  light  was  established  in  Pamet  Harbor,  but 
this  was  discontinued  in  1855,  probably  on 
account  of  the  silting  of  the  harbor  and  the 
decline  of  shipping.  Wood  End  light  dates 
from  1873,  and  other  beacons  are  found  at 
Monomoy  Point,  Hyannis,  at  Nobska  Point 
by  Woods  Hole  and  at  Wings  Neck,  on 
Wenaumet  Neck  in  Buzzards  Bay. 

Lightships  also  aid  the  sailor,  at  Shovelful! 
Shoal,  a  little  east  of  the  southern  tip  of  Mono- 
moy; in  Pollock's  Rip,  about  five  miles  east  of 
the  end  of  Monomoy  Beach;  also  Bishop  and 
Clerks,  three  miles  south  of  Point  Gammon; 
and  Cross  Rip  Shoal,  south  of  Osterville  and 
Cotuit. 

On  an  earlier  page  was  f oimd  a  reference  to 
an  old  description  of  those  east  and  west  val- 
leys which  form  a  significant  feature  of  the 
geography  of  the  lower  Cape.  This  descrip- 
tion occurs  in  a  fifteen-page  pamphlet  printed 
in  Marlboro  Street  in  Boston  in  1802.  It  was 
written  by  a  ''Member  of  the  Humane  Soci- 
ety,'* and  this  public-spirited  gentleman  was 
none  other  than  the  same  James  Freeman  who 
received  his  brother  minister's  letter  about  a 
light  at  Clay  Pounds. 

The  title  of  the  pamphlet  is  ''A  description 
of  the  Eastern  Coast  of  the  Coimty  of  Barn- 
stable from  Cape  Cod  or  Race  Point  to  Cape 


2i8  Cape  Cod 

Malebarre,  or  the  Sandy  Point  of  Chatham/* 
The  object  of  the  writing  is  to  indicate  the 
spots  on  which  the  trustees  of  the  Humane 
Society  have  erected  huts  and  other  places 
where  shipwrecked  seamen  may  look  for  shel- 
ter. Various  gentlemen  of  Provincetown  and 
Truro  had  promised  to  inspect  these  huts,  and 
see  that  they  were  kept  in  condition  as 
shelters. 

There  was  but  poor  chance  of  a  stranded, 
water-soaked,  and  freezing  sailor  finding  one 
of  these  huts;  having  to  go  up  the  cliffs,  often, 
it  might  be,  in  driving  sand  or  sleet,  over  the 
moors.  Only  a  few  months  ago  the  captain  of 
one  of  the  life-saving  stations  said  to  an  in- 
quiring visitor  that  if  one  of  his  crew  on  winter 
patrol  were  lost  in  a  night  snowstorm  it  would 
be  useless  to  go  out  and  look  for  him  until 
morning. 

If  the  shivering  wanderer  found  the  hut,  it 
woidd  be  a  ''rude  charity  house  with  fireplace, 
wood  and  matches,  straw  pallet  and  signal 
pole."  One  wonders  if  the  gentlemen  of  Truro 
and  Provincetown  always  kept  their  promise, 
and  if  the  wood  and  matches  were  always 
there.  These  dread  mischances  that  were  in- 
volved in  the  provisions  of  benevolent  minded 
members  of  the  Humane  Society  much  inter- 
ested Thoreau's  inquiring  mind,  and  he  carries 


Roads  and  Waterways        219 

his  rather  weird  speculations  through  many 
paragraphs  which  anyone  can  follow  who  reads 
the  later  pages  of  his  chapter —  'The  Beach." 

All  this  is  changed  to-day,  and  the  outer 
shore  is  fringed  with  life-saving  stations,  nine 
in  all,  running  from  Race  Point  by  Peaked 
Hill  Bar,  Highhead,  Highland,  Pamet  River, 
Cahoon  Hollow,  Nauset  Beach  and  Orleans 
Beach  to  Monomoy  station.  The  first  six  are 
within  a  distance  of  twenty  miles,  so  that  not 
more  than  three  or  four  miles  is  the  interval 
between  any  two  neighboring  stations.  At 
each  is  a  comfortable  outfit  of  buildings  for 
equipment  and  housekeeping.  The  captain 
and  his  crew  are  their  own  housekeepers,  and 
very  good  housekeepers  they  are.  They  are 
all  true  and  sturdy  men,  and  are  a  part  of  the 
naval  service  of  the  United  States. 

Some  leisure  and  much  quiet  living,  they 
have,  which  is  likely  to  be  broken  any  moment 
by  a  call  which  puts  their  lives  in  jeopardy. 
But  notions  of  leisure  in  their  task  come  mostly 
to  the  summer  visitor,  who  does  see  them  fight 
mosquitoes,  but  does  not  often  see  them  battle 
with  storm.  They  launch  a  lifeboat  in  the 
same  composure  with  which  they  visit  their 
lobster  traps,  and  their  patrols  meet  each  other 
midway  between  stations,  during  the  darkest 
and  wildest  nights,  with  booming  surf,  driving 


220  Cape  Cod 

snow,  and  that  deathly  chill  of  a  salty  gale  for 
which  the  thermometer  has  no  measure.  If 
leisure  they  do  have,  it  is  broken  by  scrubbing 
and  cooking,  tending  a  garden  in  a  nook  among 
the  sands,  or  a  call  to  practice  with  the  cannon, 
the  life  line,  the  cable,  and  the  breeches  buoy. 
In  emergency,  the  telephone  brings  two  or 
three  crews  with  great  speed  to  the  scene  of 
disaster,  and  a  long  record  of  rescue  stands 
to  the  credit  of  those  heroic  men.  After  a 
reasonable  period  of  service,  for  such  duty  is 
too  heavy  for  old  men,  they  are  retired  upon 
a  living  pension. 

The  anticipations  of  great  canals  have  usu- 
ally been  remote.  Those  of  Suez  go  back  thou- 
sands of  years,  and  those  of  Panama  through 
all  the  hundreds  of  the  white  man's  presence 
in  the  western  hemisphere.  In  this  regard, 
Cape  Cod  is  not  greatly  behind  Panama.  The 
first  sentiment  grew  out  of  the  trade  carried 
on  across  the  base  of  the  Cape,  through  the 
valley  of  old  glacial  drainage,  between  the 
business  men  of  Plymouth  and  the  Dutch  mer- 
chants of  the  lower  Hudson. 

In  1627  a  trading  house  was  built  in  the 
present  town  of  Sandwich,  by  the  Plymouth 
colonists.  Goods  were  carried  up  the  creek 
from  Scusset  Harbor  to  a  point  within  four  or 
five  miles  of  the  trading  house.     They  were 


Roads  and  Waterways        221 

then  portaged  for  a  short  distance  and  put  into 
boats  on  the  other  side.  Thus  the  trade  was 
spared  the  dangers  of  going  around  the  Cape. 
Whether  the  goal  was  the  Hudson  or  the  south 
shores  about  Narragansett  and  on  Long  Island, 
the  trading  station  was  in  the  future  Sand- 
wich but  specifically  was  at  Manomet.  The 
Dutch  began  to  bring  goods  in  1628 — sugar, 
Holland  linen  and  various  stuffs — for  which 
at  first  tobacco  was  taken  in  exchange.  This 
trade  had  assumed  quite  large  proportions  by 
the  year  1634. 

Governor  Bradford  had  gone  to  Manomet 
as  early  as  the  winter  of  1622-23  and  had  dis- 
covered the  facility  with  which  transportation 
could  be  carried  on  between  the  two  great 
bays,  there  being  a  tidal  creek  on  one  side  and 
a  river  on  the  other,  with  a  portage  of  but  four 
or  five  miles. 

Freeman  refers  to  an  action  of  the  General 
Court  authorizing  a  survey  for  a  canal  between 
Buzzards  Bay  and  Barnstable  (Cape  Cod) 
Bay,  to  avoid  enemy  ships  and  the  shoals  en- 
countered in  going  around  the  Cape.  This  is 
apparently  the  action  referred  to  by  Weeden, 
who  says,  '*in  1697,  by  decree  of  the  General 
Court,  the  Cape  Cod  Canal  was  cut,  on  paper, 
through  the  land  at  Sandwich,  from  Barn- 
stable Bay,  so  called,  into  Monimient  Bay.** 


222  Cape  Cod 

There  is  an  interesting  journal  of  a  vSiirvey 
made  in  1791,  for  a  canal  across  Cape  Cod,  by 
James  Winthrop.  This  gentleman  lived  in 
Cambridge,  and  he  tells  us  that  he  set  out  at 
one  P.M.,  May  12,  1791,  with  Henry  Parker 
as  assistant,  to  survey  Sandwich  Neck.  He 
does  not  neglect  to  mention  that  Miss  H., 
**a  lovely  girl  of  eighteen,  was  polite  enough 
to  take  this  opportunity  to  visit  her  Barnstable 
friends,  and  rode  in  the  chaise  with  me."  The 
first  lodging  was  at  Hingham,  twenty-three 
miles  out,  where  the  food  was  good,  but  the 
beds  were  objectionable.  May  13,  the  party 
dined  at  Kingston,  and,  because  of  rain,  spent 
the  night  there.  Plymouth  was  reached  May 
14  and  Sandwich  May  16. 

After  recounting  the  details  of  the  line  of 
levels  carried  across  the  Neck,  the  surveyor 
describes  a  journey  to  Barnstable  to  view  the 
ground  between  Barnstable  Harbor  and  Hy- 
annis.  In  crossing  here,  the  first  mile  is  high, 
estimated  at  eighty  feet.  There  is  no  avoiding 
it,  the  hill  being  a  part  of  a  ridge  (the  great 
moraine  as  we  know  it)  which  runs  the  whole 
length  of  the  Cape.  Mr.  Winthrop  considers 
the  use  of  Great  Pond  and  Long  Pond,  as  parts 
of  a  canal,  also  Hathaway's  Pond.  He  re- 
marks on  the  view  of  both  seas  from  Kidds 
Hill  on  the  return  by  the  road  to  Barnstable, 


Roads  and  Waterways        223 

and  notes  the  difference  in  the  amoiint  and 
time  of  the  tides  on  both  sides  of  the  Cape. 

The  canal  project  is  said  to  have  been  fa- 
vored by  Washington,  and  various  routes  were 
surveyed,  including  Sandwich,  Barnstable 
and  Yarmouth.  Wendell  Davis,  in  his  ''De- 
scription of  Sandwich"  in  1802,  refers  to  two 
of  these  projects.  The  canal,  he  thinks,  would 
newly  create  the  town  (Sandwich) ,  htmdreds  of 
dwellings  would  be  built,  property  increased 
in  value,  and  good  markets  provided.  Show- 
ing us  how  hard  it  is  to  predict  the  commercial 
conditions  of  a  future  time,  he  dwells  on  the 
*'easy  transportation  of  wood,  the  staple  ar- 
ticle of  business."  Warehouses  would  spring 
up,  and  there  would  be  growth  of  trade  be- 
tween northern  and  southern  states,  and  life 
and  property  would  be  preserved. 

The  same  writer  describes  the  Neck  between 
Great  Pond  and  Long  Pond  in  Eastham,  and 
observes  that  "here  those  who  think  it  is  as 
easy  to  dig  through  the  land  as  to  mark  a  line 
on  a  map,  will  be  disposed  to  cut  a  canal  from 
ocean  to  the  bay."  It  is  singular  that  this 
plan  should  have  been  seriously  considered. 
The  dangers  around  the  north  end  of  the  Cape 
would  have  been  avoided  but  not  the  shoals, 
the  hostile  ships,  or  any  great  share  of  the 
extra  distance.    This  project  lived  on,  for  in 


224  Cape  Cod 

1817  the  ''Eastham  and  Orleans  Canal  Pro- 
prietors** were  incorporated  to  open  a  canal 
from  the  head  of  Nauset  Cove  to  Boat  Mea- 
dow Creek.  This  was  on  the  line  already 
described  as  Jeremiah's  Gutter. 

In  i860,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  governor 
of  the  state,  the  canal  project  was  revived,  and 
the  advantages  were  believed  to  be  superior 
to  those  to  be  gained  by  tunnelling  moun- 
tains. Hoosac  Tunnel  was  then  under  con- 
struction and  long  years  before  it  had  been 
proposed  to  tunnel  the  Hoosac  range  for  a 
canal.  This  was  prior  to  the  railway  era  in 
the  Berkshires. 

The  Cape  Cod  Canal  as  finally  constructed 
follows  the  only  route  which,  as  it  woiild  seem, 
was  ever  open  to  serious  consideration.  While 
operated  by  the  government  during  the  war, 
and  now  under  agitation  for  federal  owner- 
ship, it  was  dug  and  is  still  owned  by  private 
capitalists.  It  was  opened  in  April,  19 16,  to 
vessels  drawing  twenty-five  feet  of  water. 
The  canal  is  wholly  at  sea  level,  and  has  no 
locks.  The  canal  proper  is  7 .68  miles  in  length, 
but  the  approaches  had  to  be  dredged,  so  that 
it  is  scarcely  an  error  to  say  that  the  canal  has 
a  length  of  thirteen  miles.  The  bottom  width 
is  one  hundred  feet,  making  the  waterway, 
until  further  widened,  a  one-way  canal.  About 


Roads  and  Waterways        225 

twenty  or  twenty-five  million  tons  of  coast- 
wise shipping  have  passed  each  year  around 
the  Cape.  With  widening  to  two  hundred 
feet  at  the  bottom,  the  ditch  would,  it  is 
thought,  accommodate  about  ninety  per  cent 
of  this  traffic.  Such  a  result  is  hardly  to  be 
expected  without  government  ownership  and 
the  abolition  of  toll  charges. 

The  advantages  of  the  canal  were  in  sub- 
stance foreseen  by  the  fathers,  who,  however, 
could  not  look  forward  to  the  submarine 
attack  which  startled  the  Cape  dwellers  at 
Orleans  in  the  summer  of  19 18.  This  piece  of 
inside  route,  coupled  with  other  proposed  in- 
side water  lines  to  the  southward,  will  give 
astonishing  savings  of  distances  between  Bos- 
ton and  such  ports  as  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
and  Baltimore.  There  would  also  be  great 
saving  of  time,  not  only  proportional  to  the 
shortening  of  distance  but  through  the  avoid- 
ance of  delay  on  account  of  storm.  Larger 
cargoes  could  be  carried,  and  the  charges  for 
marine  insurance  would  be  diminished. 

The  Cape  Cod  Canal  alone  results  in  saving 
from  sixty-three  to  a  hundred  fifty-two  miles 
for  ships  moving  from  any  ports  between  New 
York  and  Providence  to  ports  north  of  the 
Cape.  The  New  York  and  Boston  boats  now 
pass  through  the  canal,  and  have  thus  reduced 
15 


226  Cape  Cod 

their  time  from  sixteen  or  eighteen  hours  to 
thirteen  and  one  half  hours. 

Both  to  those  who  live  on  the  Old  Colony 
shores  and  to  those  who  visit  them  the  land 
way  has  become  far  more  important  than  the 
water  way.  Where  hundreds  go  by  the  sea, 
and  this  only  in  the  summer,  thousands  go 
and  come  by  train  and  motor  throughout  the 
year. 

Plymouth  and  Sandwich  were  both  in  early 
days  presented  before  the  General  Court  for 
not  having  the  country  road  between  these 
places  so  cleared  as  to  be  passable  for  man  and 
beast.  For  long  the  pioneers  of  Sandwich 
took  their  grists  to  the  mill  at  Plymouth  on 
their  backs  or  on  those  of  a  horse,  a  bull,  or 
a  cow.  Other  towns  as  well  as  the  two  oldest 
received  imposition  of  fines  for  tolerating  bad 
roads.  A  jury  of  twelve  men  was  appointed 
in  1637  to  lay  out  roads  about  Plymouth  and 
Duxbury. 

Rich  in  his  history  of  Truro  says  that  going 
to  Boston  by  land  from  that  part  of  the  Cape 
was  less  common  than  a  voyage  to  China. 
All  went  by  packet  but  in  early  days  there  was 
no  schedule.  To  ride  to  Boston  by  stagecoach 
in  1790,  even  from  the  upper  parts  of  the  Cape, 
required  two  days.  This  route  was  used  only 
when  bad  weather  prevented  going  by  packet. 


Roads  and  Waterways        227 

There  were  widely  traveled  men  on  the  Cape 
who  had  never  journeyed  to  Boston  by  land. 
About  1720  a  country  road  was  laid  out,  forty 
feet  wide,  from  Harwich  down  the  Cape  to 
Truro.  This  could  not  have  been  a  good  or 
permanent  highway,  for  Freeman  records  an 
effort  in  1796  to  secure  a  post  road  to  the  end 
of  the  Cape. 

About  fifteen  years  later  President  Dwight 
describes  the  road  from  Truro  to  Provincetown 
as  heavy  with  sand,  but  good  on  the  beach  at 
low  tide.  Thoreau,  apparently  on  his  first 
visit  in  1849,  reached  the  terminus  of  the  rail- 
road at  Sandwich  and  took  the  stage,  which 
seemed  to  him  then  almost  obsolete.  He  was 
told  that  all  Cape  roads  were  heavy,  and  he 
nowhere  denies  that  he  found  them  so.  He 
describes  the  road  going  down  the  lower  part 
of  the  Cape  as  a  mere  cart  track,  deep  in  sand 
and  so  narrow  that  the  wheels  often  brushed 
the  shrubbery.  No  searching  is  needed  to  find 
scores  of  miles  of  such  roads,  if  one  even  now 
departs  from  main  lines.  It  is  a  mazy  task  in 
some  of  the  forests  to  identify  one's  position 
even  with  the  government  contoured  map  in 
the  hand. 

The  Cape  Cod  Railroad,  extending  from 
Middleboro  to  Sandwich,  was  incorporated  in 
1846  and  opened  in  1848.    It  joined  the  Fall 


228  Cape  Cod 

River  and  Old  Colony  railroad,  and  in  1854 
was  built  as  far  as  Hyannis.  Extension  was 
made  from  Yarmouth  to  Orleans  and  opened 
in  1865.  Northward  from  Orleans  the  road 
was  built  by  short  stages  and  reached  Wellfleet 
in  1869.  The  line  was  carried  through  to 
Provincetown  in  1873.  The  various  branches 
became  the  Old  Colony  Railroad  in  1872, 
the  year  in  which  Woods  Hole  was  joined 
to  the  system.  The  Chatham  branch  dates 
from  1887. 

The  Boston  packets  ceased  to  run  in  1871. 
In  place  of  their  rival  speeding  and  ancient 
sociability  the  railway  had  come  in,  the  stages 
having  already  ceased  to  drag  their  toilsome 
way  through  the  sands.  Provincetown  was 
slow  to  raise  itself  out  of  the  sand.  Only  one 
horse — having  one  eye — was  there  in  1829. 
The  first  plank  walk  was  laid  down  on  the 
long,  curved  street  in  1838,  its  construction 
not  being  accomplished  without  strenuous 
opposition. 

The  advent  of  state  roads,  the  arteries  of 
the  summer  Cape,  is  recent.  A  double  system 
follows  the  north  and  south  shores,  with  sev- 
eral crossHnes.  A  trunk  line  from  Chatham 
to  Provincetown  follows  the  direct  road  from 
Boston,  from  the  junction  at  Orleans,  to  the 
lower  end  of  the  Cape. 


Roads  and  Waterways        229 

It  will  aid  the  eyes  and  imderstanding  of 
some  to  follow  the  roadways  in  their  relation 
to  the  land  forms.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the 
railway  line  from  Boston  southward  along  the 
shore  stops  at  Plymouth.  There  is  no  pubHc 
line  of  transportation  leading  along  the  first 
main  track  of  Pilgrim  travel  to  Bourne  and 
the  present  village  of  Sagamore.  The  sched- 
tiled  transport  rims  the  roundabout  cotirse  by 
way  of  Middleboro,  Wareham,  Onset  and 
Buzzards  Bay. 

From  Buzzards  Bay  to  Woods  Hole  the  rail- 
way follows  the  west  fringe  of  the  moraine, 
usually  in  view  of  the  islands,  beaches  and 
spits  of  the  Bay  shore.  It  crosses  the  belt  of 
hills  diagonally  to  Falmouth  village  at  its 
eastern  base,  and  then  runs  through  the  south- 
em  end  of  the  moraine  to  Woods  Hole. 

From  Buzzards  Bay  eastward  the  railway 
follows  the  old  Monument  River,  now  the 
canal,  and  from  Sandwich  to  Yarmouth  is  in 
the  hills  of  the  northern  edge  of  the  moraine. 
In  many  places  these  hills,  lying  north  of  the 
railway,  shut  out  the  Bay  from  the  traveler's 
view,  but  much  may  be  seen  of  the  salt 
marshes  and  bordering  dune  beaches.  These 
obstructing  hills  appear,  on  nearing  East 
Sandwich,  and  from  West  Barnstable  to 
Yarmouth. 


230  Cape  Cod 

The  spur  to  Hyannis,  only  about  four  miles 
in  length,  crosses  a  low  place  in  the  moraine 
for  about  a  mile  and  at  Yarmouth  Camp 
Ground  begins  abruptly  to  traverse  the  out- 
wash  plain  to  Nantucket  Sound.  The  main 
line  after  leaving  Yarmouth  also  crosses  the 
moraine  to  a  south-central  position  as  far  as 
Harwich  Station,  and  then  turns  north  into 
the  moraine  from  Harwich  and  Brewster  to 
Orleans,  and  northward  runs  through  a  field  of 
morainic  hills  and  lakes  about  Eastham  Center. 

Northward  the  railway  crosses  the  Eastham 
plain  to  South  Wellfleet,  from  which  it  rises 
upon  the  back  of  the  high  Wellfleet  plain 
northward  to  North  Truro.  In  Truro,  by  the 
Provincetown  waterworks,  the  road  descends 
to  the  beach,  which  it  follows  until  it  enters 
the  dunes  of  Provincetown. 

A  main  line  of  highway  joins  Duxbury, 
Kingston,  Plymouth  and  Sagamore.  Two 
main  lines,  as  above  said,  follow  the  upper 
Cape.  The  northshore  route  is  much  like  that 
of  the  railway.  Both  run  south  of  certain 
morainic  elevations  that  are  north  of  the  prin- 
cipal belt  of  hills.  These  are — Town  Neck  in 
Sandwich,  Spring  Hill  near  East  Sandwich 
and  Scorton  Neck. 

At  Yarmouth  Port  this  road  keeps  near  the 
shore  through  the  towns  of  Yarmouth,  Den- 


Roads  and  Waterways        231 

nis  and  Brewster,  and  then  follows  nearly  a 
middle  course  between  the  inner  and  outer 
shores  to  Provincetown.  From  Wellfieet  to 
North  Truro  it  is  well  hidden  from  both  sea 
borders,  winding  among  the  hills,  pine  forests 
and  lakes  of  the  northern  wilderness. 

The  southshore  route  pursues  its  way 
around  the  heads  of  the  deep  bays  of  the  out- 
wash  plain  through  Falmouth,  Cotuit  and 
Marston's  Mills  to  Hyannis,  thence  to  Chat- 
ham nearer  the  shore.  From  Buzzards  Bay 
to  Woods  Hole,  the  description  of  the  railway 
route  is  equally  true  of  the  highway. 

For  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  the 
colonists  had  to  depend  on  chance  travelers 
for  sending  letters.  In  days  that  still  were 
early,  a  postrider  took  the  whole  mail  in  his 
saddlebags  and  they  were  lean  at  that.  He 
required  a  week  for  going  down  the  Cape  and 
accompHshing  his  return.  The  first  regular 
mail  was  estabHshed  in  1754,  between  Plym- 
outh and  Nauset.  In  1775  there  was  a  route 
from  Cambridge  to  Plymouth,  Sandwich  and 
Falmouth,  a  round  trip  occupying  the  days 
from  Monday  to  Saturday.  The  first  United 
States  mail  was  sent  from  Boston  to  Barn- 
stable in  1 792.  The  pay  of  the  carrier  was  one 
dollar  per  day,  which  was  criticised  as  an 
extravagant  use  of  the  public  money. 


232  Cape  Cod 

The  first  post  office  in  Yarmouth  was  opened 
in  1794,  with  mails  once  a  week  and  no  post 
office  below  it  on  the  Cape.  In  1 797  there  was 
a  weekly  mail  from  Yarmouth  to  Truro,  but 
it  was  not  thought  worth  while  to  extend  the 
service  to  Provincetown.  The  period  of  the 
second  war  with  Great  Britain  saw  mails 
carried  down  the  Cape  twice  a  week,  a  third 
mail  being  added  a  few  years  later.  In  1854 
Yarmouth  had  mails  twice  each  day. 

Telegraph  wires  began  to  be  strung  on  the 
Cape  in  1855  and  even  rival  lines  were  not 
long  in  being  set  up.  The  Cape  has  had  its 
share  in  Atlantic  cables  and  wireless  flashings, 
and  the  aeroplane  sailed  over  with  the  coming 
of  the  war.  The  isolation  of  the  Cape  has 
passed  away,  and  the  hotel  keeper  phones  in 
his  orders  to  Boston,  and  the  motor  truck  and 
the  express  car  are  in  the  land.  If  the  old 
foreland  was  ever  asleep,  which  may  be 
doubted,  it  has  awakened  to  the  modern  call. 
None  can  predict  when  flight  will  put  Truro 
and  Chatham  among  the  suburbs  of  Boston, 
when  Old  Colony  trains  will  cease  to  run  up- 
hill and  downhill,  and  the  Dorothy  Bradford 
will  find  undisturbed  repose. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THREE  CENTURIES  OF  POPULATION 

The  problem  of  population  ties  itself  up  in 
endless  complications.  Soil  and  mine,  harbors 
and  highways,  world  position,  human  inven- 
tion and  duration  of  occupation  are  all  in- 
volved. The  wealth  of  the  soil  is  much  but 
can  hardly  be  said  to  control.  If  one  doubts 
this  let  him  think  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
or  of  Belgium,  or  the  States  of  Massachusetts 
and  Rhode  Island,  none  of  these  raising  more 
than  a  fraction  of  its  food.  Other  resources 
coimt,  particularly  if  there  be  stores  of  coal 
and  iron,  and  other  materials  which  invite 
hand  or  machine  craft.  Situation,  harbors 
and  roads  may  be  such  as  to  favor  trade. 
Thus  all  resources  and  conditions  have  a  share 
in  determining  whether  the  people  will  be 
scattered  and  few,  or  compact  and  many. 

One  might  compare  the  United  Kingdom 
and  Norway — about  equal  in  square  miles — 
with  forty-five  million  over  against  two  mil- 
lion of  himian  beings.    Perhaps  the  Norwegian 

233 


234  Cape  Cod 

is  as  enterprising  as  the  Briton,  and  he  has 
plenty  of  harbors  and  a  fair  situation.  But 
there  is  not  much  underground  material  that 
is  useful  and  hardly  a  decent  county  area  of 
good  soil  in  the  whole  kingdom.  The  Orient 
is  different,  with  dense  population,  rich  soil, 
and  little  manufacture  save  of  simple  home 
necessities.  Natural  wealth  is  large,  but  ex- 
cept as  to  soils,  is  little  used,  while  the  age  of 
these  countries  makes  western  Europe  look 
young. 

The  development  of  the  Old  Colony  is  fa- 
vored or  hindered  by  what  goes  on  in  New 
York  or  the  Mississippi  Valley.  The  human 
factor  after  all  may  outweigh  the  rest — what 
has  been  bred  into  a  race,  what  they  bring 
to  their  land,  may  be  more  than  all  that  their 
environment  brings  to  them. 

The  circuit  of  Cape  Cod  Bay  has  its  full 
share  of  these  enigmas.  Some  things  are  plain 
enough — that  the  soils  are  poor,  that  the  min- 
eral wealth  is  almost  nothing,  and  that  the 
situation,  so  far  as  the  great  world  is  con- 
cerned, is  good.  The  harbors  used  to  be  good, 
but  human  invention  has  made  over  our  sail- 
ing contrivances  and  made  most  of  the  harbors 
poor,  nature  helping  here  and  there  in  the 
process.  The  prairies  have  drawn  off  the  Cape 
farmer.    The  trout  of  the  Great  Lakes  and  the 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  235 

salmon  of  the  Columbia  River  have  discour- 
aged the  fisherman,  and  the  population  of  the 
Cape  has  diminished. 

But  the  Cape  keeps  its  long  and  glorious 
shoreline,  its  air  is  as  pure  and  life  giving  as  it 
ever  was,  and  modern  skill  will  make  the  most 
of  its  soils.  Then  the  richer  interior,  in  the 
summer  furnace  of  a  continental  climate,  be- 
thinks itself  of  the  Cape  and  goes  back  to  it 
for  something  better  than  wheat,  or  coal  or 
iron,  or  any  other  form  of  wealth.  The  Cape 
has  resources  after  all — will  these  riches,  ap- 
pealing to  the  higher  needs  of  a  filling  conti- 
nent, build  up  the  old  shore  towns,  occupy  the 
foreland  with  intensive  tillage  and  send  its 
population  curve  upward  in  the  coming  dec- 
ades? Such  are  the  questions,  but  they  are 
not  answered  here. 

The  population  of  Barnstable  County  had 
been  going  down  for  about  twenty-five  years, 
when,  in  1896,  the  Massachusetts  legislature 
provided  means  for  a  thorough  study  of  all 
resources  and  conditions,  in  the  hope  of  re- 
peopling  this  great  outpost  of  the  Common- 
wealth. The  result  is  that  a  hundred  pages 
are  buried  in  a  state  document,  which  tell 
more  about  the  real  Cape  than  all  that  has 
since  been  written  of  the  land  and  its  people. 

Barnstable  County  went  continuously  up 


236  Cape  Cod 

in  the  number  of  its  people  for  nearly  a  cen- 
tury, from  the  year  1765  to  i860.  At  the 
earlier  date  the  county  had  a  little  more  than 
twelve  thousand  inhabitants,  and,  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  Civil  War,  the  nimiber  had  risen  to 
thirty-six  thousand.  The  next  fifty  years  saw 
an  unbroken  decline,  but  the  falling  off  was 
less  rapid  than  the  earlier  increase. 

The  towns  have  their  own  interesting  sto- 
ries of  rising  and  falling.  Provincetown  grew 
in  mmibers  from  1776  to  1890  and  since  the 
latter  date  has  been  fluctuating.  The  town 
has  nothing  of  much  worth  in  its  lands  but  it 
does  have  position,  some  shipping,  a  worthy 
remnant  of  fishing,  the  summer  visitors,  and 
the  artist  colony. 

Truro  grew  from  1800  to  1850,  and  the  latter 
decades  of  that  half-century  saw  the  popiila- 
tion  rising  rapidly.  It  was  the  generation  that 
saw  the  culmination  of  the  shipping  and  fish- 
ing, giving  life  with  the  help  of  well-tilled 
farms  to  more  than  two  thousand  people. 
Then  the  decline  set  in,  to  1910,  and  another 
federal  mmibering  will  soon  tell  whether  it  has 
gone  on  until  to-day.  Marine  life  is  almost 
completely  gone,  save  for  one  freezing  plant 
and  a  few  weirs;  the  use  of  the  land  is  far  less 
than  it  was,  and  the  summer  industry  has  not 
yet  made  up  for  lost  relations  with  the  sea. 


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POPULATION    OF    BARNSTABLE 
COUNTY 


POPULATION    OF    PROVINCETOWN 
AND   TRURO 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  237 

Tniro  goes  with  Eastham,  Brewster  and 
Mashpee  in  each  having  less  than  seven  hun- 
dred people.  Comparing  in  another  way 
Truro  stands  with  Chatham,  Yarmouth  and 
Wellfleet,  for  these  four  are  the  only  towns 
that  have  suffered  a  continuous  loss  of  people 
since  1865.  All  have  had  great  marine  pros- 
perity and  have  suffered  from  its  decline. 

The  town  of  Falmouth  has  been  increasing 
its  numbers  in  most  of  the  recent  decades. 
The  reason  is  easy  to  find,  in  the  villages  of 
Falmouth  and  Woods  Hole,  and  in  the  un- 
broken chain  of  summer  places  which  follow 
the  Falmouth  shores  of  Vineyard  Sound  and 
Buzzards  Bay.  Most,  or  many,  of  the  simimer 
people  do  not,  indeed,  count  in  the  Falmouth 
census,  but  they  make  it  both  possible  and 
necessary  that  others  should  live  there  who 
are  counted. 

Barnstable's  decline  from  about  1865  was 
arrested  about  1890,  and  the  town  has  shown 
marked  increases  in  later  years,  due  to  summer 
life  in  its  several  centers  of  resort.  Barnstable 
is  the  town  of  two  shores  and  fourteen  post 
offices,  and  its  bays  and  lakes  have  had  mag- 
netic influences.  People  need  not,  unless  they 
are  surveyors,  selectmen  or  antiquarians,  pay 
much  heed  to  town  lines,  and  may  have  for- 
gotten or  not  have  known  that  in  this  one  town 


238  Cape  Cod 

are  Barnstable,  West  Barnstable,  Centerville, 
Cottdt,  Osterville,  Marston's  Mills,  Craigs- 
ville  and  Hyannis. 

The  density  of  population  is  a  friendly  topic 
for  statisticians  and  geographers.  The  word 
has  a  technical  flavor,  but  anybody,  it  seems, 
might  have  an  interest  in  the  question  of  how 
many  people  live  on  a  square  mile,  and  how 
many  might  live  there.  In  very  truth,  that 
problem  translated  into  terms  of  food  and 
elbow  room,  too  often  creates  wars  and 
dictates  peace,  and  lies  at  the  root  of  our 
most  irritating  modem  questions. 

Barnstable  County  has  a  land  surface  of 
four  hundred  and  nine  square  miles,  and  her 
population  for  each  mile  in  1910  was  67.8. 
This  will  mean  more  if  we  add  the  fact  that 
Massachusetts  as  a  whole  had  418.8  people  to 
the  square  mile.  People  on  the  average  mile 
of  the  Bay  State  are  six  times  as  many  as  on 
an  average  mile  of  the  Cape. 

The  only  cotmties  that  had  fewer  people  for 
the  space  were  Dukes  (Island  of  Martha's 
Vineyard)  with  42.1;  Nantucket  with  58.1; 
and  Franklin  with  62 .6.  Dukes  and  Nantuck- 
et, in  sea  and  soil  and  in  isolation,  are  off  the 
same  piece  with  Barnstable,  while  Franklin 
is  a  rural  inland  cotmty  whose  largest  center 
of  population  is  Greenfield.    Plymouth  Coun- 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  239 

ty  had  in  1910  a  density  of  213.8.  But  this 
county  has  the  town  centers  of  Plymouth 
and  Middleboro,  and  the  large  manufacturing 
city  of  Brockton.  The  greater  part  of  Ply- 
mouth County,  with  its  glacial  wilderness,  is 
akin  to  Barnstable  in  the  wide  spacing  of  its 
people. 

The  Old  Colony,  or  that  part  of  it  which 
Hes  around  the  Bay,  is,  if  we  except  the  outer 
islands,  more  nearly  true  to  its  ancient  type 
of  people  than  any  other  part  of  Massachu- 
setts. The  three  counties  of  Barnstable, 
Dukes  and  Nantucket  have  fewer  foreign 
born,  relative  to  their  total  population,  than 
any  other  counties  of  the  state,  Barnstable 
being  the  lowest  on  the  mainland.  Barnstable 
had  in  1900  a  little  more  than  one  in  ten  whose 
place  of  birth  was  across  the  seas,  and  in  1910 
the  fraction  rose  to  13.6  in  a  hundred,  making 
in  actual  numbers  3,769. 

Plymouth  County  had  less  than  one-fifth 
of  foreign-born  residents  and  yet  it  contains 
the  city  of  Brockton.  If  we  consider  the  for- 
eign-born people  outside  of  the  big  shoe  town, 
they  stand  in  much  smaller  proportion.  Tak- 
ing Plymouth  County,  as  a  whole,  although 
it  runs  up  close  to  the  great  mixtures  in  and 
aroimd  Boston,  it  has  relatively  fewer  foreign- 
born  people  than  any  county  of  the  Connecti- 


240  Cape  Cod 

cut  Valley  or  the  Berkshire  region  except  the 
county  of  Franklin. 

Two  fifths  of  the  people  of  foreign  birth  in 
19 10,  were  Portuguese,  some  from  Portugal 
and  some  from  the  Atlantic  Islands,  in  all  more 
than  fifteen  hundred.  Less  than  a  hundred 
were  French  Canadian,  with  about  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  English  and  seventy-four 
Scotch.  These  facts  show  how  little  alien  is  a 
considerable  section  of  the  group  that  is  named 
foreign.  There  were  also  about  three  hundred 
from  Ireland,  about  four  hundred  Italians,  and 
not  far  from  two  hundred  and  fifty  Finns. 
Greece  sent  only  two,  Austria  four,  Hungary 
seven,  and  Russia  thirty-two,  while  of  Turks 
there  were  eight.  It  is  plain  enough  that  this 
comer  of  Massachusetts  has  not  yet  any 
baffling  problems  of  Americanization,  for  there 
is  no  element  of  any  nimibers  that  is  not  ca- 
pable of  ready  assimilation.  Here  is  one  of  the 
most  American  parts  of  America. 

The  conditions  thus  recited  do  not,  however, 
nearly  represent  the  full  influences  of  the  Por- 
tuguese in  peopling  the  Cape,  for  large  numbers 
of  native  born  had  one  or  both  parents  of 
that  blood.  The  greatest  concentration  of 
these  swarthy  people  is  in  Provincetown, 
where  dark  faces  are  common,  where  Portu- 
guese names  are  on  many  signs,  and  where 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  241 

half  or  nearly  half  of  the  population  is  of 
this  origin. 

The  representative  of  a  New  York  newspa- 
per went  to  Provincetown  not  long  ago,  and 
declared  that  the  old  American  families  there 
were  anxious  about  the  coming  census,  fearing 
it  might  show  that  the  old  stock  was  outnum- 
bered by  the  Portuguese.  According  to  this 
scribe,  most  of  the  Portuguese  at  this  end  of 
the  Cape  are  from  the  Azores,  and  they  are 
admitted  to  be  good  citizens,  and  to  have  been 
good  and  patriotic  fighters  in  the  late  war. 

But,  however  much  the  Silvas  and  Dutras 
and  Enoses  are  respected,  the  descendants  of 
the  Puritans  do  not  want  a  Portuguese  Board 
of  Selectmen.  It  would  break  the  order  of  the 
centuries  on  the  Cape.  The  same  sort  of  feel- 
ing moved  a  good  lady  of  the  town  who  a  few 
years  ago  was  having  her  daughter  tutored 
in  the  summer  vacation  in  order  to  get  her 
out  of  a  school  in  which  she  was  the  only 
Ar^erican  of  the  old  stock.  Most  of  the  Portu- 
guese are  fishermen  but,  as  the  signs  show,  a 
number  are  in  the  business  of  the  town.  They 
have  in  considerable  nimibers  mingled  in  the 
population  of  the  adjoining  town  of  Truro. 

Many  of  the  immigrants  of  the  larger 
groups,  English,  Irish  and  Portuguese,  have 
been  attracted  by  fishing.  In  addition  to  this 
16 


242  Cape  Cod 

motive,  there  were  cheap  homes  to  be  had  in  a 
region  from  which  the  younger  native  popula- 
tion was  moving  out  in  search  of  larger  oppor- 
tunities. The  Portuguese  have  also  added  in  a 
special  way  to  the  industrial  life  of  the  Cape 
by  their  skill  in  tilling  the  soil,  especially  in 
the  raising  of  vegetables  and  fruit. 

All  the  towns  where  many  Portuguese  live 
have  shown  much  progress  in  production  from 
the  fields.  This  is  true  even  in  Provincetown 
where  soils  are  scanty,  but  here  the  Portu- 
guese bent  is  mainly  for  fishing.  The  Portu- 
guese women  of  Provincetown  are  not  to  be 
overlooked,  for  they  are  known  as  efficient  in 
service,  skillful  with  the  needle,  and  they  are 
not  disposed  to  let  the  berries  of  the  swamps 
and  dunes  go  to  waste. 

Many  of  these  immigrants,  seeking  relief 
from  overcrowding  and  feudal  constraint  at 
the  old  homes  in  the  Azores  or  in  other  Portu- 
guese lands,  have  entered  America  through  the 
port  of  New  Bedford.  If  they  were  not  caught 
by  the  millwork  of  that  busy  center,  it  was 
easy  to  arrive  upon  the  cheap  lands  of  the 
Cape.  These  fresh  comers  are  known  as 
thrifty  and  laborious,  and  they  make  good 
citizens. 

No  steam  or  sailing  vessels  have  made  regu- 
lar trips  between  New  Bedford  and  the  Azores 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  243 

since  the  year  1908.  Some  small  sailing  ves- 
sels ply  between  the  Cape  Verde  Islands  and 
New  Bedford,  and  bring  passengers  on  their 
return  to  this  shore.  The  trade  was  discon- 
tinued during  the  submarine  raids  of  the  war, 
but  has  been  resumed.  The  ships  are  small, 
and  the  immigrants  are  few  in  numbers  at  the 
present  time. 

Some  of  the  ''Americanos"  go  back  to  end 
their  days  in  the  Azores,  and  they  seem  to  be 
much  preferred  there  to  the  ''Brazileiro."  A 
Lisbon  paper  many  years  ago  rehearsed  the 
virtues  of  the  Portuguese  who  had  put  himself 
under  American  training.  He  was  strong  in 
body,  good  and  sympathetic,  ready  for  work 
and  devoted  to  his  family.  He  had  brought 
culture  into  his  home,  and  carried  back  to  his 
native  island  the  patriotic  impulses  and  hopes 
that  he  had  gained  in  the  United  States. 

The  Brazileiro  was  branded  as  lazy,  pleasure 
loving,  and  tmtrue  to  family  and  religion,  as 
vain,  boastful  and  overreaching.  It  is  not  re- 
mote to  credit  his  Puritan  neighbors  and  the 
pressure  of  the  New  England  environment, 
with  the  virtues  of  the  Americanos,  making 
due  allowance  for  the  exuberance  of  the  Latin 
journalist. 

The  recent  immigration,  mainly  of  the  last 
twenty  years,  has  concentrated  more  espe- 


244  Cape  Cod 

cially  in  the  town  of  Falmouth .  There  are  two 
classes  of  these  people.  The  Bravas,  or  black 
Portuguese,  come  from  the  Atlantic  Islands 
and  are  said  to  be  a  cross  of  African  negroes 
and  Portuguese  exiles.  The  white  Portuguese 
hold  themselves  quite  above  the  blacks,  and 
have  no  intercourse  with  them  unless  it  be  of 
employers  with  the  employed.  These  newer 
immigrants  have  not  yet  come  into  American 
notions  of  womankind,  and  the  consequence 
is  that  the  wives  and  children,  even  young 
children,  do  long  days  of  work  in  the  fields. 
These  people  have  brought  from  the  religious 
connection  of  the  old  country  little  loyalty,  but 
some  measure  of  superstition. 

The  new  Portuguese  have  not  only  gone  to 
Falmouth,  but  especially  to  the  eastern  parts 
of  the  town,  the  whites  being  at  East  Falmouth 
and  the  blacks  at  Waquoit.  One  of  the  good 
ministers  of  Falmouth  has  in  recent  years  giv- 
en himself  with  true  zeal  and  self-sacrifice  to 
the  modernizing  and  Americanizing  of  these 
people,  employing  night  schools  and  other 
means  of  enlightenment.  In  the  district  school 
at  East  Falmouth  in  the  winter  of  19 18-19 19, 
there  were  a  hundred  and  eleven  children  of 
whom  nine  were  American.  All  the  rest  were 
the  offspring  of  foreign-bom  Portuguese 
parents. 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  245 

Some  nine  hundred  make  up  the  Portuguese 
count  in  these  eastern  parts  of  Falmouth.  A 
few  have  made  much  progress  and  have  be- 
come excellent  citizens.  Some  Portuguese  are 
credited  with  an  intent  to  control  town  affairs 
within  a  period  of  seven  years.  They  are 
mostly  on  the  soil,  but  a  few  are  carpenters 
and  painters.  In  19 18  it  was  a  Portuguese 
girl  who  took  first  honors  in  the  Falmouth 
High  School. 

The  new  farmers  are  working  northward  in 
the  forests  lying  toward  Hatchville  in  Fal- 
mouth. Some  of  the  homes  are  very  decent 
bungalows,  especially  to  be  found  on  the  road 
north  from  Teaticket.  There  is  one  settlement 
of  nine  houses,  of  which  eight  are  Portuguese, 
and  only  one,  the  worst  of  all,  the  property  of 
a  native.  The  Portuguese  are  rapidly  acquir- 
ing motor  cars,  which,  with  fair  roads  on  the 
outwash  plain,  opening  to  the  trunk  highway 
of  the  south  shore,  are  useful  for  marketing. 
There  is  a  considerable  group  of  Portuguese  in 
the  town  of  Barnstable.  A  dozen  houses  will 
be  found  in  the  scrub,  not  far  from  Hyannis, 
on  the  road  leading  to  Yarmouth  Port. 

Some  Portuguese  have  drifted  eastward  into 
Harwich  and  Chatham,  thus  giving  the  Cape 
an  invasion  at  both  ends;  an  earlier  incursion 
from  the  north  and  a  later  one  from  the  south- 


246  Cape  Cod 

west.  The  Portuguese  women  of  Harwich 
make  a  season's  round  which  not  only  fills 
their  pockets  but  flings  an  interesting  sidelight 
on  modern  Cape  activities.  They  begin  in  the 
spring  with  picking  the  May  flower,  the  arbu- 
tus, with  which  this  sandy  corner  of  Massa- 
chusetts is  blessed.  This  they  peddle,  to  a 
reward  of  forty  dollars  apiece  it  may  be.  Then 
our  hardworking  and  thrifty  woman  goes  to 
Falmouth  and  nets  a  hundred  dollars  in  the 
strawberry  harvest.  She  retiirns  home  for  the 
blueberry  season,  and  when  these  are  done  the 
cranberry  gathering  is  on  and  autumn  has 
come. 

Some  of  the  men  get  jobs  at  the  aviation 
camp  in  Chatham,  others  work  on  the  railroad, 
and  the  middle  autumn  requires  considerable 
work  on  the  bogs,  after  the  berries  are  har- 
vested. The  labor  problem  does  not  much  dis- 
tress the  Portugee — he  raises  his  own  working 
force,  feeds,  clothes  and  does  not  fail  to  em- 
ploy them.  A  boy  of  this  race  went  astray  and 
was  haled  to  Barnstable  Court.  The  judge 
asked  if  his  father  was  present.  He  arose 
among  a  crowd  of  his  countrymen,  and  to  the 
question — how  many  children  have  you — said, 
twenty-three.  I  did  not  ask  your  age,  rejoined 
the  magistrate — how  many  children  have  you? 
Twenty-three,  was  again  replied,  and  none 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  247 

went  wrong  but  this  one.  Take  the  lad,  said 
the  judge — and  see  if  you  can  make  a  good  boy 
of  him.  So  it  appears  that  the  Cape  will  have 
people,  but  they  will  not  all  be  Mayflower 
descendants. 

Italians  have  not  made  much  way  on  the 
Cape,  but  form  a  small  colony  in  Sandwich, 
where  they  live  in  the  old  houses  around  the 
abandoned  glass  works.  They  work  chiefly  in 
the  Keith  Car  Works  at  Sagamore  and  go 
thither  by  bicycles,  jitneys  and  the  trains. 
The  Finn  Colony  is  in  the  western  environs  of 
Barnstable  village,  where  these  people  raise 
farm  and  garden  crops,  dig  clams,  and  now, 
like  the  Italians,  seek  the  more  ample  returns 
of  shop  work  in  Sagamore.  The  Finns  con- 
tinued to  come  until  the  opening  of  the  war. 

The  foreigner  has  not  made  much  impres- 
sion on  the  life  around  Cape  Cod  Bay.  If 
there  be  exceptions  they  are  found  in  the  shop 
neighborhoods  of  Plymouth  and  Sagamore,  on 
the  farms  of  Falmouth  and  in  the  fishing  indus- 
tries of  the  lower  Cape.  The  newcomers  have 
not  made  enough  progress  to  take  any  appre- 
ciable part  in  the  government  of  the  towns. 
Falmouth,  for  example,  has  its  thousand 
Portuguese,  more  or  less,  but  the  roll  of  its 
town  officers  points  to  an  astonishing  main- 
tenance of  the  ancient  traditions. 


248  Cape  Cod 

The  list  of  officers  and  committeemen  in 
Falmouth  for  a  recent  year  contains  about  a 
hundred  and  thirty  names.  The  designations 
of  the  various  committees  are  of  the  pure  flavor 
of  old  New  England.  We  find  a  herring  com- 
mittee, surveyors  of  wood,  fence  viewers,  field 
drivers,  surveyors  of  Itimber,  public  weighers 
and  a  committee  for  the  care  of  public  wells. 
One  from  west  of  the  Berkshires  has  to  have 
some  of  these  enigmas  solved  for  him,  but  he 
can  well  imagine  all  sorts  of  arbitrations  and 
adjudications  of  neighborly  or  unneighborly 
differences  of  opinion. 

This  list  of  a  hundred  and  thirty  names  in 
Falmouth  does  not  include  a  single  name  that 
strikes  one  as  foreign,  and  they  are  nearly  all 
of  British  origin.  Only  one  or  two  have  dis- 
tinctly Biblical  names.  This  would  be  differ- 
ent if  we  were  to  follow  the  records  back. 
Even  in  1872  the  list  has  a  Meltiah,  a  Job,  a 
Zaccheus,  an  Ezekiel,  a  Jabez  and  a  Joshua. 

The  legislation  of  the  town  meetings  shows 
a  survival  of  old  ways  and  thoughts  in  the 
official  life.  Among  the  '  'articles"  in  the  report 
of  the  town  meeting  of  191 7  is  this — "To  see 
if  the  town  will  vote  to  restrain  horses,  neat 
cattle  and  swine  from  rtinning  at  large  within 
the  limits  of  the  town  the  year  ensuing;  voted 
that  they  be  so  restrained."     ''To  see  if  the 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  249 

town  will  vote  to  sell  the  herrings  from  one 
or  more  of  its  rivers,"  etc.  Then  follow  the 
various  regulations  of  the  herring  catch  that 
were  voted. 

If  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  a  cheerful  bur- 
ial place  it  is  the  modem  cemetery  of  Falmouth 
village.  Seen  in  an  August  Simday  morning, 
it  joined  in  perfect  blending  the  loveliness  of 
nature  with  simple  art  and  gentle  memory. 
It  is  a  natural  forest,  oaks  and  a  few  pines, 
open  to  the  sun  which  floods  the  silky  green  of 
the  turf,  the  brilliancy  gently  toned  by  the 
shadows  of  the  trees.  The  lots  are  in  low 
terraces,  and  the  monuments  and  headstones 
are  modest  and  simple. 

The  names  on  these  stones  taken  at  random 
are  a  perfect  record  of  Americanism,  or  if  you 
please,  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  blood.  Here  are 
the  names — Swift,  Bourne,  Baker,  Pierce, 
Clark,  Lawrence,  Walker,  Davis,  Thayer, 
Phinney,  WilHams,  Spencer,  Turner,  Waters, 
Gifford,  Jenkins,  Hatch,  Nye,  Fish,  Crosby, 
Robinson,  Wright,  Hamblin,  Sanford.  These 
names  in  their  silence  are  vocal  of  old  Falmouth 
and  the  old  Cape,  and  they  show  too,  modern 
as  this  God's  acre  is,  how  the  old  life  is  pre- 
served in  the  new,  as  the  third  century  comes 
to  its  end. 

In  the  thin  volume  which  records  the  doings 


250  Cape  Cod 

at  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  Falmouth 
are  given  fourteen  names  of  those  who  landed 
here  in  1660,  which  were  still  here  at  the  time 
of  the  bicentennial.  Of  the  fourteen,  five  are 
living  names  in  Falmouth  to-day.  The  five 
names  are  Jenkins,  Hinckley,  Hatch,  Robin- 
son and  Hamblin.  For.  a  century  and  a  half 
nearly  every  Falmouth  family  was  represented 
on  the  ocean.  To-day  the  roll  call  would  reach 
far  over  the  continent  but  the  heart  of  the 
older  life  still  remains  in  the  town  which  gave 
it  birth. 

Mashpee  in  all  its  history  probably  never 
had  as  many  as  four  hundred  inhabitants  and 
has  always  had  a  smaller  count  than  any  other 
town  of  the  Cape.  Someone  has  volunteered 
the  wise  opinion  that  the  town  did  not  develop 
because  of  its  remote  situation.  It  is  hardly 
to  be  called  far  away,  however,  for  it  has  its 
bit  of  the  Vineyard  Sound  bays  and  shores, 
and  is  crossed  by  the  main  road  from  Falmouth 
to  Chatham.  It  has  its  share  of  soil  and  more 
than  its  part  of  beautiful  lakes  and  running 
waters. 

The  limitations  of  Mashpee  have  always 
been  in  its  people.  Here  the  remnants  of  a 
once  widespread  Indian  population  were  gath- 
ered. Here  good  men  sought  to  convert,  edu- 
cate, and  uplift  them,  and  bad  men  crowded 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  251 

them  off  their  lands,  and  took  advantage  of 
them.  It  is  the  old  story  of  the  ultimate  sub- 
mergence of  every  lingering  bit  of  the  red  race. 

Richard  Bourne  and  his  noble  successors, 
who  devoted  lifetimes  to  the  salvation  of  their 
little  flock  around  Mashpee  Lake,  and  counted 
with  joy  the  number  of  praying  Indians,  might 
have  a  shiver  of  disappointment,  could  they 
see  the  woods  and  streams  and  scattered  homes 
and  people  of  Mashpee  to-day.  We  are  told 
that  peacefulness  reigns  there,  where  no  pure- 
blooded  Indian  has  lived  in  many  long  years. 
The  infiltration  of  negro  and  Portuguese  dark 
blood,  has  produced  what  to  the  casual  comer 
would  not  seem  to  be  other  than  a  real  com- 
munity of  Africans.  No  doubt  the  truth  as  to 
Mashpee  culture  is  somewhere  in  the  mean, 
for  the  Mashpee  combination  is  not  exactly  a 
theme  for  lyrical  fervor,  and  yet  it  is  on  the 
whole  a  respectable  community  of  dark- 
skinned  farmers  and  laborers  who  return  at 
night  to  rather  primitive  houses,  and  do  the 
best  that  less  than  three  hundred  limited  peo- 
ple can  do,  to  keep  moving  the  machinery  of  a 
New  England  town. 

Two  hundred  years  ago  Harvard  College 
was  made  the  trustee  of  a  fund  from  an  Eng- 
lish benefactor,  and  to  this  day  the  college 
annually  pays  over  the  income  of  the  endow- 


252  Cape  Cod 

ment  for  the  support  of  the  Mashpee  Church. 
Other  influences  from  the  great  institution  at 
Cambridge  are  near  enough  in  the  summer 
months  to  shed  their  Hght  upon  this  dark  peo- 
ple, in  whose  domain  the  summer  sun  is  as 
glorious  as  anywhere  on  the  Cape,  and  the 
winter  cold  is  often  as  pronounced  and  invigo- 
rating as  in  the  Berkshires  or  the  Green 
Mountains. 

The  population  of  the  Cape  has  sent  out  its 
full  share  of  distinguished  sons  into  the  world. 
Nathaniel  Gorham,  President  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  and  signer  of  the  federal  Con- 
stitution, was  descended  from  Captain  John 
Gorham  of  Barnstable.  The  Otis  family  hav- 
ing first  settled  in  Hingham,  John  Otis,  Senior, 
and  John  Otis,  Junior,  removed  to  Barnstable 
and  built  near  the  Great  Marshes  the  home- 
stead where  several  generations  of  Otises  made 
their  home.  A  number  of  men  of  this  line 
gained  distinction  in  Massachusetts  and  in  the 
nation.  James  Otis,  "pioneer  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  was  bom  in  the  Barnstable  farm- 
house in  1725.  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  whose  life 
has  recently  been  written  by  one  of  his  de- 
scendants. Dr.  Samuel  E.  Morrison  of  Harvard 
University,  was  born  in  Boston  in  1765,  but  he, 
with  some  members  of  the  family,  took  refuge 
in  the  old  Cape  homestead  in  the  troublous 


Three  Centuries  of  Population  253 

times  that  beset  Massachusetts  in  the  opening 
months  of  the  Revolution. 

Chief  Justice  Lemuel  Shaw,  and  Professor 
John  G.  Palfrey,  the  orator  at  the  Barnstable 
celebration  in  1839,  were  both  of  Barnstable 
lineage.  William  Everett,  the  distinguished 
headmaster  of  the  Quincy  school  was  a  great- 
grandson  of  Nathaniel  Gorham.  Among  well- 
known  living  persons  are  the  Swifts  of  the 
great  Chicago  packing  houses,  whose  forbears 
were  residents  of  Cape  Cod.  The  President  of 
Brown  University,  Dr.  William  H.  P.  Faimce, 
is  descended  from  Elder  Thomas  Faunce, 
whose  ashes  repose  on  Burial  Hill  in  Plymouth. 
It  was  he  who  by  a  long  life  of  high  service, 
joined,  in  his  tenacious  memory  and  facile 
speech,  the  early  history  of  the  Pilgrim  fathers 
to  more  recent  days.  The  first  American 
Faimce  came  in  the  Ann  in  1623,  and  Elder 
Faunce  was,  just  before  his  death,  the  only 
remaining  person  who  had  talked  with  the 
sons  of  the  Mayflower  people.  Major  General 
Leonard  Wood  is  also  of  Cape  Cod  origin. 

Scores  of  small  cities  there  are  in  our 
crowded  East,  any  one  of  which  has  as  many 
men,  women  and  children  as  have  ever  lived 
at  any  one  time  in  Barnstable  County  or  in  the 
Town  of  Plymouth.  It  is  idle  to  inquire 
whether  the  Bay  shores  will  ever  have  a  larger 


254  Cape  Cod 

population  than  they  have  had  in  the  past. 
The  value  of  populations  is  not  in  their  num- 
bers but  in  their  quality.  It  is  not  even  so 
much  in  what  they  have  done — the  quantity 
of  fish  they  have  caught,  the  com  and  cran- 
berries they  have  raised,  or  the  products  of 
their  few  and  scattered  mills — ^it  is  what  they 
have  been  and  what  they  have  thought,  that 
have  given  them  their  place  in  the  history 
and  the  affection  of  Americans.  Such  are  the 
influences  which  have  made  the  face  of  this 
half -barren  foreland  of  more  meaning  than  the 
fertile  bottoms  of  great  valleys  or  the  fat  soils 
of  the  wide  prairie. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  ENVIRONMENT  OF  THE  SEA 

That  distinguished  New  England  preacher, 
Horace  Bushnell,  once  made  a  sermon,  or 
wrote  an  essay,  on  the  moral  uses  of  the  sea. 
The  wisdom  of  men,  he  thought,  would  not 
have  covered  three  fourths  of  the  sphere  with 
water,  but  would  have  made  leviathan  give 
way  to  the  reapers,  on  a  good  round  ball  of 
meadow  and  ploughland.  But,  saying  nothing 
of  moderated  climate  and  needed  rain,  he 
thought  there  were  larger  and  wider  needs  for 
the  sea.  Brotherhood  and  enlightenment  may 
grow  out  of  trade,  and  exchange  of  ideas  and 
goods  is  easy  between  Boston  and  Singapore, 
but  difficult  between  Timbuctoo  and  Samark- 
and. 

Moreover,  the  medieval  shackles  of  the  old 
world  would  gradually  have  lapped  over  into 
the  new,  if  there  had  been  no  Atlantic  Ocean, 
and  there  would  have  been  no  reserved  conti- 
nent on  which  man  could  try  a  fresh  experi- 
ment in  institutions.    One  looks  for  stagnation 

255 


256  Cape  Cod 

in  the  heart  of  the  Alps  or  in  the  Kentucky 
mountains,  but  ''the  shores  and  islands  of  the 
world  have  felt  the  pulse  of  human  society 
and  yielded  themselves  to  progress." 

No  easy  problems  are  these,  and  there  is  no 
thought  of  dragging  the  Old  Colony  deep  into 
earth  philosophy.  Most  of  the  Pilgrims  had 
been  farmers  and  artisans  and  many  of  them 
found  themselves,  or  at  least  their  grandchil- 
dren and  great-grandchildren,  digging  clams, 
catching  and  drying  fish  and  sailing  vessels. 

How  deep  the  change  went,  or  whether  it 
struck  really  below  the  surface  of  their  lives, 
may  be  a  question.  It  is  safe  enough,  we  may 
be  pretty  sure,  to  bury  the  notion  that  the 
shores  and  storms  and  hills  and  boulders  of 
New  England  made  them  into  another  kind 
of  people  from  the  company  that  sailed  out  of 
Delft  Haven.  Probably  the  Pilgrims  changed 
New  England  more  than  New  England 
changed  the  Pilgrims.  The  Mayflower  Eng- 
lishman was  old  in  his  heredity  of  character 
when  he  came  to  Plymouth  Rock,  and  he  has 
not  changed  so  much  in  his  three  hundred 
years  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  setting 
of  his  day's  work  and  of  his  season's  toil,  is 
quite  different  from  Scrooby  and  Austerfield, 
and  he  has  shifted  from  the  occupations  of  his 
fathers,  throwing  off  meanwhile  some  of  the 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  257 

austerities  of  Puritanism,  as  have  his  May- 
flower cousins  in  New  York  and  Ohio. 

All  this  is  not  to  toss  overboard  our  faith  in 
what  environment  does  to  us,  it  is  only  an- 
nouncing at  the  outset  that  surroimdings  are 
not  everything,  and  whatever  their  deepest  in- 
fluences may  be,  they  require  a  long  time  to 
exert  them.  The  first  of  the  Old  Colony  folk 
had  been  subject  to  other  sorts  of  environment 
for  millenniums,  but  what  had  happened  to 
them  thereby  we  cannot  trace.  We  know  what 
they  were  in  1620,  and  what  kind  of  a  land 
they  came  to.  That  new  land  made  over  their 
outer  ways  and  in  some  fashion  no  doubt  bore 
in  on  their  thought  and  inner  life. 

We  may  remember  that  the  motherland  of 
the  Pilgrims  is  little  in  square  mlies,  but  big  in 
coastline,  that  Britain  has  a  place  in  the  world 
out  of  all  ratio  to  her  size.  If  we  remember  that 
nobody  in  Great  Britain  lives  more  than  two 
or  three  hours  from  the  sea,  perhaps  we  shall 
know  why  the  Old  Colony  is  so  small  and  yet 
so  large  in  America.    When  Tennyson  wrote, 

Broad  based  on  her  people's  will 
And  compassed  by  the  inviolate  sea, 

he  brought  a  fact  and  not  an  argument.    But 
it  would  be  easy  to  make  the  argument,  and 
to  read  the  logic  between  the  lines. 
17 


258  Cape  Cod 

The  compact  drawn  in  Provincetown  Har- 
bor sounds  like  the  work  of  democrats  and 
freemen.  If  the  men  were  such,  and  if  their 
environment  had  somewhat  tended  to  make 
them  such,  it  was  the  insular  environment  of 
centuries  that  had  been  doing  it.  The  east 
winds  and  the  toil  on  Plymouth  shore  did  not 
beat  it  into  them  in  a  day. 

We  have  no  idea  of  setting  up  a  title  to  this 
last  chapter  on  the  Old  Colony,  and  running 
away  from  it,  as  if  the  neighborhood  of  the  sea 
had  meant  nothing  from  1620  to  1920.  It  has 
meant  much,  and  if  we  would  comprehend  how 
much,  we  might  ask  what  the  Pilgrims  might 
have  become  or  have  failed  to  become,  if  they 
had  not  stopped  on  the  shores.  Suppose  they 
had  gone  far  inland.  We  might  possibly  read 
their  history  in  the  story  of  equally  free  and 
strong  men  who  moved  along  the  Great  Valley 
of  the  South,  and  spread  out  into  the  secluded 
uplands  of  the  Appalachians  to  fossilize  for 
generations. 

The  Pilgrims  did  not  settle  on  an  island,  but 
it  might  almost  as  well  have  been.  On  the 
Cape  they  could  go  but  a  few  miles  from  the 
sea — rarely  did  they  plant  their  houses  a  mile 
from  the  strand.  In  Plymouth  and  Kingston 
and  Duxbury  they  lived  upon  the  shore  and 
back  of  them  was  a  wilderness  which  only 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  259 

stem  necessity  made  them  enter.  Their  Hves 
fronted  the  main. 

They  found  the  soils  none  too  extended  or 
good,  and  the  factory  era  in  New  England  was 
scores  of  years  in  the  unseen  and  undreamed 
future.  They  were  forced  upon  the  sea.  Per- 
haps there  was  more  democracy  in  this,  and 
certainly  there  was  outlook  on  the  world  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  a  world  whose  mag- 
nitude had  then  but  dawned  on  the  race. 
They  were  a  part  of  the  outgoing  into  that 
world  from  that  most  effective  of  colonizing 
nations,  whose  sons  to-day  make  nothing  of 
ploughing  or  fighting  at  the  antipodes. 

One  of  the  keenest  English  students  of  earth 
science  thinks  fishing  is  a  training  in  democ- 
racy, ''based  on  the  equality  of  man  and  man 
in  the  jointly-owned  boat,  and  the  equality  of 
man  and  woman  in  the  common  home  from 
which  the  fisherman  is  absent  so  often  and  so 
long  that  dual  control  must  be  evolved."' 
Lyde  thinks  constitutional  government  has 
everywhere  grown  out  of  the  domestic  organi- 
zation of  a  fishing  race,  whose  members  are 
brave  and  enduring,  lovers  of  freedom  and 
space,  individualistic  and  conservative.  Else- 
where this  writer  characterizes  the  sea  as  the 
great  nursery  of  democracy. 

^Lionel  W.  Lyde,  The  Continent  of  Europe,  p.  12. 


26o  Cape  Cod 

If  half  of  this  could  be  proven  true,  the  Pil- 
grims, responding  to  the  inviting  waters  that 
washed  their  shores,  came  under  an  influence 
that  strengthened  the  independence  and 
rooted  the  principles  which  they  brought 
across  the  sea  with  them.  Moreover,  a  writer 
who  knew  New  England  as  well  as  Lyde  knows 
old  England,  comments  on  the  degeneracy  or 
half-savagery  that  is  likely  to  go  with  the  fur 
trade,  while  fishing  ''made  the  hardy  fisherman 
and  bold  sailor  of  the  New  England  coast. 
The  fur  trader  debauched  the  Indians,  profit- 
ing by  a  toil  not  his  own.  The  fisherman, 
industrious  and  capable,  more  or  less  interested 
in  his  ventures,  controlled  the  seas  from  the 
foothold  in  his  boat,  and  mastered  individual 
freedom  on  the  land." 

The  Pilgrims  might  elsewhere  have  found  a 
lean  and  sandy  soil,  but  there  was  another  in- 
fluence, or  condition,  of  greater  power — the  Old 
Colony  climate — and  that  was  mainly  ordered 
by  the  sea.  While  there  is  some  sign  that  they 
felt  its  greater  rigor  as  compared  with  England, 
nevertheless  they  thought  it  remarkably  simi- 
lar in  its  temperatures  to  the  land  from  which 
they  had  come. 

In  Good  News  from  New  England,  included 
in  Winslow's  Relation,  the  writer  gives  an  ac- 
count of  the  climate  which  we  would  not  cut 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  261 

short.  ''Then  for  the  temperature  of  the  air, 
in  almost  three  years  experience  I  can  scarce 
distinguish  New  England  from  old  England, 
in  respect  of  heat  and  cold,  frost,  snow,  winds, 
etc.  Some  object,  because  our  plantation 
lieth  in  the  latitude  of  42°,  it  must  needs  be 
much  hotter.  I  confess  I  cannot  give  the  rea- 
son of  the  contrary;  only  experience  teacheth 
us,  that  if  it  do  exceed  England,  it  is  so  little 
as  must  require  better  judgments  to  discern  it. 
And  for  the  winter,  I  rather  think  (if  there  be 
difference)  it  is  both  sharper  and  longer  in  New 
England  than  Old;  and  yet  the  want  of  those 
comforts  in  the  one  which  I  have  enjoyed  in 
the  other,  may  deceive  my  judgment  also. 
But  in  my  best  observations,  comparing  our 
own  condition  with  the  Relations  of  other 
parts  of  America,  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  to 
agree  better  with  the  constitution  of  the  Eng- 
lish, not  being  oppressed  with  extremity  of 
heat,  nor  nipped  by  biting  cold;  by  which 
means,  blessed  by  God,  we  enjoy  our  health 
notwithstanding  those  difficulties  we  have 
undergone." 

There  is  much  to  admire  in  this  story — it 
has  in  quaint  phrase  a  scientific  temper  quite 
worthy  of  the  present  age.  There  is  no  at- 
tempt to  explain  what  was  to  the  writer  inex- 
plicable, not  knowing  the  influence  of  the 


262  Cape  Cod 

Atlantic  drift  and  the  westerly  winds  on  the 
more  northerly  parts  of  Europe.  Then  too 
the  oceanic  character  of  the  climate  is  brought 
out,  that  is,  its  evenness  and  mild  tempera- 
tures, though  the  cause  is  not  recognized;  and 
finally  there  is  full  allowance  made  for  the 
possible  bias  of  personal  impressions. 

The  winter  of  the  settlement  is  thought  to 
have  been  mild,  with  little  snow,  otherwise  the 
little  community  might  not  have  buried  their 
dead  as  they  did  on  Cole's  Hill,  or  have  carried 
on  so  effectively  the  building  of  their  cabins. 
Great  storms  would  come,  though  not  perhaps 
in  their  lifetime,  a  winter  uproar,  as  in  1815, 
around  the  Buzzards  Bay  shores,  when  salt 
houses  were  destroyed,  trees  killed  by  salt 
overflow  into  fresh  swamps,  springs  and  wells 
made  salt  where  not  directly  reached  by  the 
flood,  and  the  tide  eight  feet  above  the  com- 
mon levels ;  or  like  the  storm  a  century  earlier 
when  the  Indians  dug  a  tunnel  through  the 
snow  in  Eastham  that  they  might  carry  the 
body  of  their  beloved  pastor,  the  Reverend 
Samuel  Treat,  to  its  rest. 

But  commonly  nature  does  not  put  on  her 
sternest  moods  on  the  Cape,  save  at  the  sea 
border,  where  every  winter's  winds  and  waves 
lash  the  shore — and  raw  and  biting  blasts  la- 
den with  sand  sweep  across  the  open  fields,  and 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea   263 

from  earliest  times  have  taught  the  Cape  dwel- 
ler to  build  his  house  low,  planted  in  a  hollow 
or  behind  a  forest,  with  his  apple  trees  and 
gardens. 

The  climate  is  oceanic,  and  much  is  com- 
pressed into  that  rather  scientific  word — re- 
freshing siimmers,  and  moderate  cold  in  win- 
ter. The  Wellfieet  oysterman,  truly ,  no  doubt, 
told  Thoreau  that  no  ice  ever  formed  on  the 
back  of  the  Cape,  or  not  more  than  once  in  a 
century,  and  but  little  snow  lay  there. 

The  greatest  thickness  of  ice  on  the  ponds 
back  of  Provincetown  is  about  nine  inches,  and 
in  some  winters  there  is  no  ice  harvest  at  all. 
There  were  eight  inches  on  a  small  pond  below 
Mashpee  Lake  in  the  winter  just  passed,  but 
in  the  previous  winter,  which  was  cold  every- 
where in  our  northern  states,  the  Cape  was  not 
overlooked,  for  there  were  twenty-four  inches 
of  ice  on  Mashpee  Lake,  and  automobiles 
freely  roamed  upon  its  surface. 

Nor  must  it  be  supposed  that  summer  heat 
never  oppresses.  Even  Provincetown,  if  it 
must  be  said,  is  sometimes  hot,  behind  its  ram- 
part of  dunes.  The  historian,  Dr.  Freeman, 
says  of  the  favored  position  of  some  old  salt 
vats,  ''the  sand  hills  tinder  which  they  stood 
reflected  on  the  vats  a  strong  heat.'*  In  a 
land  which  men  love,  the  climate  is  almost 


264  Cape  Cod 

always  called  ** favorable  to  longevity,'*  and 
Freeman  bears  it  out,  to  a  degree  at  least,  by 
asserting,  for  about  the  year  1800,  that  Chat- 
ham, with  1 35 1  inhabitants,  was  so  healthful 
as  not  to  justify  the  settlement  there  of  a  phy- 
sician. This  devoted  son  of  the  Cape  simis  up 
his  loyal  admiration  thus — ''The  Cape  is  and 
was  so  intended  by  the  Allwise  to  be  a  good 
land,  surrounded  by  goodly  seas,  blessed  with 
an  invigorating  and  inspiring  atmosphere,  sup- 
plying all  needful  comforts  to  its  possessors." 
Standing  up  seven  or  eight  feet  above  the 
ground  of  a  small  triangular  park  in  Falmouth 
village  is  a  glacial  boulder.  It  is  surmounted 
by  an  anchor  lying  about  eight  feet  along  the 
top  of  the  rock.  On  the  face  of  the  stone  is  a 
bronze  tablet,  showing  in  low  relief  a  sailing 
ship.  On  the  border  is  a  knotted  rope,  with  a 
starfish  at  each  corner,  and  under  the  ship  is 
this  inscription — 

Dedicated  by  the  citizens 

and 

Public  school  children  of  Falmouth 

In  loving  memory  of  her 

Seamen 

1907. 

Here  is  the  homage  of  a  new  century  to  daring 
ancestors  and  a  romantic  past.  Yesterday  the 
Cape  belonged  to  the  sea — does  it  belong  to- 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea   265 

day  to  the  land?  Has  the  Cape  Codder,  ceas- 
ing his  far  wanderings,  set  his  face  to  the  land? 
Having  shaped  the  life  of  the  Pilgrim  and 
turned  him  into  a  fisherman,  a  whaler,  or  a 
master  of  world  trade,  has  the  sea  lost  its  grip 
on  the  present  sons  of  the  Cape  and  left  them 
land  grubbers,  devoid  of  distances? 

Hardly  is  the  land  thus  degenerate.  If  one 
looks  up,  and  one  cannot  help  looking  up, 
the  same  water  is  there,  yet  never  the  same, 
coming  from  somewhere,  moving  some  whith- 
er; the  same  colors,  but  never  the  same — 
blues,  greens,  purples,  grays  and  what  not, 
putting  to  shame  anybody  who  cannot  ana- 
lyze a  rainbow.  The  horizon  is  shut  away 
in  mist,  or  it  rims  the  view  as  sharp  and  far 
away  as  it  was  in  any  clear  day  in  the  year 
1620. 

Here  is  the  same  beach,  yet  remodeled  by 
every  tide  and  revolutionized  by  every  storm. 
You  see  the  same  cliffs,  yet  moved  a  little  in- 
land, scarred  and  gullied  in  a  slightly  different 
pattern,  undermined  and  collapsing  now  here, 
now  there .  Something  of  the  moving  picture 
is  this  Cape — ^beacon  fires,  refuge  huts,  and 
meeting-house  steering  have  passed  away,  but 
lighthouses,  the  life  savers'  well-built  houses, 
and  Scargo  Hill  and  Manomet  arouse  the  same 
thoughts  of  the  sea  and  its  toilers,  of  the  ships 


266  Cape  Cod 

and  their  dangers,  of  the  waves  and  their 
escaping  prey. 

Not  many  structures  are  so  alluring  as  a 
wharf.  The  laden  fishing  boat  in  Bergen, 
Great  Grimsby,  Plymouth  or  Provincetown, 
will  call  a  crowd,  and  a  good  haul  from  the  lob- 
ster traps  awakens  other  than  housewives  and 
hotel  chefs.  It  is  the  sea  and  a  harvest  gotten 
out  of  it  that  appeals — the  benevolence  and 
happy  chance  of  it,  as  well  as  the  toil  and  dar- 
ing of  it.  Of  course  the  devotee  of  brook  trout 
and  deer  and  forest  trails  will  have  his  ardent 
say,  and  the  sea  lover  is  too  sure  of  his  shore 
and  his  ocean  to  care. 

Common  things  get  a  new  glory  when  they 
are  mixed  with  the  sea.  The  boat  heading 
for  New  York,  whether  seen  as  of  yore  in  the 
twilight  outside  the  Cape,  with  all  lights  on, 
or  more  dimly  from  the  Plymouth  shore  out 
in  the  Bay,  aiming  at  the  Canal,  has  more 
fascination  than  the  equally  brilliant,  swifter 
moving  New  York  train.  The  coal  barges 
make  one  think  of  Pennsylvania  mines,  of  the 
wharves  of  Philadelphia  and  Newport  News, 
of  the  cotton  mills  of  Salem,  the  shoes  of 
Brockton  and  Lynn  and  the  shops  of  Boston, 
but  it  is  more  than  an  everyday  bit  of  trade 
and  stem  toil,  it  is  the  world's  interchange, 
the  cosmic  highway  and  the  life  of  man. 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  267 

This  is  the  fascination  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
homely  heroes  of  Cape  Cod.  Rough  they  may 
look,  plainly  and  profanely  they  may  speak, 
but  they  are  no  longer  common  persons,  they 
impersonate  struggle,  daring  and  achieve- 
ment, they  have  gone  down  to  the  sea  in  ships, 
they  have  done  business  in  great  waters,  they 
see  far  beyond  the  doors  and  dooryards  of 
their  low  shingled  cottages  and  you  see  with 
them.  The  toothless  grandson  of  Johnny 
Trout,  spending  the  peaceful  holiday  of  his 
old  age,  sparkles  with  the  vitality  of  the  ocean 
and  pours  out  upon  you  the  remembered  lore 
of  Batavia  and  Melbourne.  So  it  must  ever 
be  on  the  Cape,  for  here  the  voyagers  of  the 
sea  have  come  to  land  and  here  the  toilers  of 
the  land  come  down  to  the  shore  to  breathe, 
and  to  look  out  widely. 

The  dweller  on  Old  Colony  shores  can  hard- 
ly have  escaped  being  a  lover  of  the  sea.  It 
is  born  with  him,  lives  with  him,  and  is  handed 
on  to  his  children.  What  this  does  for  him  can 
not  so  well  be  defined  as  dreamed  of,  for  so  it 
is  with  all  love.  We  are  quite  aware  that  no 
less  a  person  than  Henry  Van  Dyke  tosses  all 
this  aside.  '*  The  sea  is  too  big  for  loving  and 
too  imcertain."  Indeed  some  ambitious  per- 
sons have  loved  the  sea,  deluded  people  who 
have  not  discovered  that  it  is  a  formless  and 


268  Cape  Cod 

disquieting  passion — to  devote  one's  self  to  a 
*'salt  abstraction."  It  is  like  loving  a  nation's 
type  of  woman,  Van  Dyke  thinks — better  one 
of  them.  Hence,  we  suppose,  one  might  turn 
to  little  rivers.  But  little  rivers  may  dry  away, 
or  plunge  underground.  Rivers  are  temporary 
things  in  a  continent's  unfolding,  often  made 
up  of  scraps,  pirated  by  other  rivers,  mutilated 
by  engineers,  fouled  with  man's  refuse,  perse- 
cuting one  with  mosquitoes,  tearing  the  flesh 
with  briers,  and  bruising  the  feet  with  stones. 
One  might  say  that  God  too  is  great,  and 
inscrutable,  for  one  would  not  like  to  call  Him 
uncertain.  Would  the  distinguished  clergy- 
man think  God  too  great  to  be  loved?  The 
soul  if  capacious  enough  may  love  what  is 
great.  And  it  hinges  on  what  one  means  by 
loving.  The  Pilgrim  lived,  and  his  offspring 
live,  by  the  sea.  If  they  love  it,  does  it  mean 
to  be  drawn  toward  it,  inspired  by  it,  to  be 
awed  by  its  mystery,  thrilled  by  its  vastness, 
to  have  imagination  roused  by  its  depths,  its 
spaces,  its  plenitude  of  life,  mother  of  all  life? 
Does  it  signify  reveling  in  its  infinitude  of 
changing  colors,  to  join  with  every  breaking 
roller  on  its  shore  in  our  short  sojourn  by  it — 
the  waves  that  have  not  rested  in  eons,  yet 
tidal  to  the  predictable  moment  of  rise  and 
fall  and  least  of  all  ''uncertain  "  ? 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea   269 

We  watch  it  destroying  lands,  rebuilding 
continents,  engulfing  the  works  of  man,  and 
man  himself — terrible,  is  it,  rather  than  allur- 
ing— well,  on  the  whole  reckoning,  the  ocean, 
remorseless  as  it  seems  to  be,  has  been  friendly 
to  humankind.  It  depends  on  the  size  of  yotir 
loving,  whether  you  want  the  distant  view, 
and  not  a  foreground,  a  trout  instead  of  a  cod, 
a  swordfish  rather  than  a  leviathan. 

So  leaving  all  to  love  their  river,  their  moun- 
tain, their  lake,  their  forest,  or  their  ocean,  as 
they  will,  the  Cape  man  seems  to  line  up  with 
that  elder  New  England  prophet,  who,  broad 
beyond  his  time,  wrote,  "It  is  of  the  greatest 
consequence,  too,  that  such  a  being  as  God 
should  have  images  prepared  to  express  him, 
and  set  him  before  the  mind  of  man .... 
These  he  has  provided  in  the  heavens  and  the 
sea,  which  are  the  two  great  images  of  his  vast- 
ness  and  his  power." 

Dark-heaving,  boundless,  endless,  and  sublime. 
I  gaze — and  am  changed  at  the  sight. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  say  that  if  one  brings 
his  idealism  with  him  he  will  be  inspired  by 
the  sea.  But  the  sea  like  other  things  might 
be  staled  by  custom  to  him  that  lives  by  it. 
A  man  might,  as  some  are  said  to  do,  get  all 
his  firewood  from  the  beach,  and  never  wonder 


270  Cape  Cod 

where  the  battered  log  grew,  who  sawed  and 
spiked  the  plank,  what  ship  lost  the  new  lum- 
ber in  the  rolling  of  the  storm,  or  who  uncorked 
the  empty  bottle. 

When  wrecks  off  the  shore  were  more  fre- 
quent than  they  are  now,  moon  cursing — 
(Cape  Cod — ^moon  cussing)  was  more  common 
than  it  is  to-day.  Yet  to-day,  if  you  drag  up 
a  plank  beyond  the  grasp  of  the  wave  and  put 
your  name  on  it,  he  is  no  proper  son  of  the 
Cape  who  would  not  respect  your  ownership, 
and  leave  the  piece  tintil  you  found  it  conven- 
ient to  bear  it  up  the  cliff.  The  "mooning'* 
follows  the  traditions  of  that  old-world  and 
old-time  period  of  piratical  crews  who  used 
to  decoy  vessels  on  the  rocks  by  false  lights 
and  cursed  the  moon  when  she  disturbed 
their  diabolical  work.  Laws  and  humanity 
have  eliminated  the  savagery,  for  the  Cape 
man  would  rescue  rather  than  ruin,  and  if  the 
wreckage  be  above  a  certain  value  he  must 
advertise  and  seek  the  owner,  before  he  can 
claim  it  as  his  own. 

Wreckage  is  not  so  common  as  it  used  to  be, 
in  these  days  of  steamships,  yet  a  man, 
hardly  now  in  middle  life,  recalls  salvaging  fif- 
teen thousand  feet  of  lumber  which  he  hauled 
up  the  outer  cliff  with  ropes  and  tackle.  A 
couple  of  hundred  feet  of  heavy  hawser  was 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  271 

another  ocean  gift  of  no  mean  value,  and  our 
friend's  father  recovered  a  valuable  tiger  skin, 
racing  to  it  with  a  Provincetown  deacon,  who, 
tradition  allows,  was  very  angry.  Brussels 
carpets  and  cases  of  champagne  have  been 
drawn  sometimes  from  this  titanic  grab  bag. 
Was  Cape  Cod  a  bad  place  for  morals,  we  ven- 
tured to  inquire,  *'  No,  but  when  they  go  moon 
cussing  look  out ! ! '  *  All  of  which  seems  to  mean 
that  here  human  nature  varies  in  its  expression 
by  force  of  circumstances,  but  its  substance 
is  as  everywhere.  Some  think  Cape  people  are 
especially  ''thrifty."  So  to  judge  is  not  to 
display  a  wide  acquaintance  with  villagers  and 
coimtrymen,  live  they  where  they  may. 

The  seaward  compulsion  of  the  Cape  did  not 
escape  the  acute  mind  of  Timothy  Dwight, 
who  did  not  fail  to  see  why  the  houses  were 
built  in  valleys  and  defended  by  forests.  The 
children  of  Provincetown  played  as  familiarly 
in  the  water  as  other  children  frolic  in  the 
streets,  and  little  boys  managed  boats  with 
skill.  Every  employment  seemed  connected 
with  the  sea.  And  the  moral  influence  of  it 
was  peculiarly  in  Dwight's  province.  There 
was  the  broadening  influence  of  the  sea,  of 
sailing  the  ships  and  receiving  strangers,  for 
''while  most  of  their  coimtrymen  have  been 
chained  to  a  small  spot  of  earth,  they  have 


272  Cape  Cod 

traversed  the  ocean."  Perhaps  he  would  have 
agreed  with  a  later  writer  that  distances  en- 
franchise, while  altitudes  enslave. 

How  many  would  live  on  the  Cape  or  go  to 
the  Cape,  if  it  were  so  much  land  and  just 
such  land,  in  an  interior  situation?  A  little 
farming,  a  little  fresh-water  fishing,  a  little 
hunting,  no  water  power,  no  mineral  wealth, 
forests  for  beauty  but  not  for  the  lumberman — 
nothing — until  we  get  the  view  of  that  visitor 
who  coimted  the  real  area  as  triple  the  actual 
surface,  reckoning  in  the  adjoining  sea,  for  its 
manifold  production  as  compared  with  the 
fields,  and,  quoting  Fisher  Ames,  ''every  cod- 
fish drawn  up  has  a  pistareen  in  its  mouth." 

How  much  is  there  on  the  Cape  that  is  not 
for  the  sea,  or  of  the  sea,  or  does  not  suggest 
the  sea — the  monument  of  Provincetown,  me- 
morial of  a  sea  voyage — the  lighthouses,  the 
life-saving  stations,  the  wireless  towers,  the 
old  windmills  built  because  there  was  little 
fuel,  no  water  power,  and  there  were  winds  of 
the  sea — wharves,  villages,  low  houses,  kettle- 
hole  gardens,  drooping  goldenrod,  shrinking 
apple  trees,  pitch  pine  carpets  on  the  sand — 
man  and  nature  all  attuned  to  the  majestic 
overlordship  of  the  sea. 

Somewhat  has  been  written  of  the  supposed 
naive  ways  of  the  Cape  people.     Something 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  273 

like  this  has  perhaps  come  to  be  expected  by 
readers  who  never  went  nearer  the  Cape  than 
Scituate  or  Providence  or,  perhaps,  were  never 
east  of  the  Berkshires.  This  misconception 
has  grown  by  what  it  has  fed  on  for  three 
fourths  of  a  century.  Some,  at  least,  of  dis- 
cerning people  who  have  gone  up  and  down 
the  length  of  Barnstable  County  for  years 
have  never  observed  that  a  trainload  of  Cape 
natives  chatters  more  vociferously  than  other 
trainloads,  and  have  never  seen  half  the  train 
''leaning  out  of  the  windows"  conversing  in 
shouts  with  the  villagers. 

The  Brewsters  along  the  railway  are  not 
bewilderingly  numerous,  and  no  one  should 
count  on  seeing  all  Provincetown  out  to  meet 
the  train.  These  good  people  do  not  jostle  for 
the  papers  as  hungry  chickens  reach  for  food, 
nor  keep  you  off  the  sidewalk,  nor  behave 
otherwise  than  as  the  average  Pilgrim  descend- 
ant, or  cultivated  New  Englander,  or  Ameri- 
canized Portuguese  should  treat  his  casual 
neighbor. 

If  Shaler  wrote  truly  of  that  ''deep  and  pe- 
culiar enlargement"  that  comes  to  dwellers  by 
the  sea;  if  Lucy  Larcom  knew  in  very  truth 
that  one  reared  by  the  sea  requires  a  wide  hori- 
zon for  the  body  and  the  mind,  shall  we  find 
the  Cape  supporting  these  well -settled  notions 
18 


274  Cape  Cod 

of  the  scholar  and  the  story  writer?  Thoreau, 
it  may  be  quite  safe  to  think,  did  not  conclude 
that  all  the  people  of  the  Cape,  of  Falmouth, 
Barnstable,  Chatham,  Orleans  and  the  rest, 
were  as  ignorant  and  provincial  as  some  of  the 
queer  characters  which  he  liked  to  encounter, 
and  did  find,  in  his  out-of-the-way  itinerary, 
nor  would  he,  we  fancy,  subscribe  to  the  con- 
ventional admiration  of  his  odd  genius,  which 
assumes  that  he  said  the  last  word  about  the 
dwellers  on  this  foreland. 

Barnstable  County  folks  probably  do  not 
need  a  defender,  nor  do  they  perhaps  care  so 
much  what  is  written  about  them.  They  will 
proceed  with  intensive  farming,  will  catch  fish, 
manage  hotels,  live  at  leisure  on  their  income, 
send  their  children  to  normal  schools  and  col- 
leges, and  do  their  share  of  work  and  thinking 
in  that  fine  old  New  England  of  which  they 
are  a  part. 

Suppose  a  Cape  Codder  did  visit  New  York 
City,  and  did  therefore  "have  something  to 
talk  about  to  his  neighbors  all  winter."  And 
suppose  he  was  devoid  of  ambition  and  went  to 
his  burrow  every  autumn  with  a  half -barrel 
of  pork,  five  hundred  pounds  of  salt  fish,  some 
potatoes  and  a  few  cords  of  wood;  or  suppose 
he  is  "different"  being  slow  to  change;  grant 
all  these  things — could  not  one  find  these 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  275 

types  in  Maine,  or  Vermont  or  the  Empire 
State?  Why  must  we  feel  compelled  to  dis- 
cover on  these  fascinating  shores  a  people  who 
never  existed,  whose  quaintness  could  be 
matched  on  any  other  shore  and  outdone  in 
the  recesses  of  any  mountain  region. 

It  is  not  easy  to  wean  the  Old  Colony  man 
from  his  native  shores.  He  may  go  where  he 
will  at  the  call  of  duty  or  opportunity,  but  the 
pictures  of  memory  stay  with  him  and  he 
often  hears  the  call  to  return.  And  he  comes 
back  to  rest,  to  meet  the  old  neighbors,  to 
rebuild  the  paternal  cottage,  to  refurbish  the 
mansion  of  his  sea-going  ancestor,  to  amuse 
himself  with  the  cranberry  bog,  to  experiment 
in  modem  farming,  to  roll  over  the  roads  that 
in  his  boyhood  were  down  in  the  sand.  Per- 
haps the  call  is  stronger,  and  he  returns  to 
finish  his  days.  It  is  not  the  old  friends,  for 
many  of  them  are  gone — it  is  not  the  lakes  or 
forests,  for  others  are  as  beautiful — it  must  be 
the  lure  of  the  ocean,  the  sea  blood  has  never 
gotten  out  of  his  veins. 

Let  not  a  belated  lover  of  the  Cape,  but 
another,  better  fitted,  say  it,  "A  Cape  man 
finds  nowhere  else  so  glorious  a  home,  so  full 
of  such  sweet  memories.  The  Cape  colors  him 
all  his  life — the  roots  and  fiber  of  him.  He 
may  get  beyond,  but  he  never  gets  over  the 


276  Cape  Cod 

Cape.  .  .  .  He  will  feel  in  odd  hours,  to  his 
life's  end,  the  creek  tide  on  which  he  floated 
inshore  as  a  boy,  the  hunger  of  the  salt  marsh 
in  haying  time,  the  cold  splash  of  the  sea  spray 
at  the  harbor's  mouth,  the  spring  of  the  boat 
over  the  bar,  the  wind  rising  inshore,  the  blast 
of  the  wet  northeaster.  He  will  remember  the 
yellow  dawn  of  an  October  morning  across  his 
misty  moors,  and  the  fog  of  the  chill  pond 
among  the  pine  trees,  and  above  all  the  blue 
sea  within  its  headlands,  on  which  go  the 
white-winged  ships  to  that  great,  far-off  world 
which  the  boy  had  heard  of  and  the  grown 
man  knows  so  well." 

We  have  heard  a  historian  question  whether 
the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  were  a  great  and  forma- 
tive force  in  American  life.  But  a  plain  and 
not  unobservant  American,  if  no  historian, 
believes  still  that  it  was  not  so  much  a  matter 
of  numbers  or  constructive  statesmanship  in 
colonial  and  federal  days  as  of  high  and  per- 
vading sentiment.  It  was  what  the  Pilgrims 
were  that  mattered — how  they  thought  and 
lived  told  the  story.  It  is  not  so  important, 
perhaps,  if  the  men  of  Boston  and  the  other 
people  on  Massachusetts  Bay  fill  more  pages 
in  political  and  military  history  than  the  plain 
men  of  Plymouth,  Sandwich,  Barnstable  and 
Provincetown. 


The  Environment  of  the  Sea  277 

When  the  Mayflower  anchored  in  the  outer 
haven  of  the  Cape,  and  her  tired  voyagers 
waded  to  shore,  and  when,  after  cold  and 
stormy  search,  they  landed  on  the  Plymouth 
side  of  the  Bay,  they  fixed  the  destiny  of  a 
continent.  They  lived  and  died  on  the  borders 
of  Cape  Cod  Bay,  and  thither  others  came  to 
fill  up  their  shrinking  nimibers.  All  these  were 
forerunners  of  Massachusetts,  of  Rhode  Island 
and  Connecticut,  of  all  New  England.  In 
time  New  England  passed  into  New  York,  and 
from  New  York  to  Ohio,  and  Wisconsin. 
Within  the  memory  of  our  older  men,  Iowa, 
Nebraska,  Colorado  and  Oregon  have  felt  the 
pulse  of  the  Puritan  energy. 

In  morals  and  religion,  in  constitutions  and 
laws,  in  trade  and  education,  old  England  laid 
hold  of  the  outstretched  Cape,  and  thence 
began  its  march  to  the  western  sea.  No  other 
continent  entangles  itself  in  the  sea  with  a 
land  just  like  the  Cape.  It  is  long  and  narrow 
and  crooked ;  it  is  of  low  relief,  of  frail  materi- 
als, changeable  and  poor,  exposed  to  wind  and 
wave — it  is  land,  but  land  ruled  by  water,  its 
sands  and  storms,  its  herbs  and  trees,  its  men 
and  its  daily  tasks  controlled  by  the  sea. 


INDEX 


Agassiz,  Louis,  glacial  theory 

referred  to,  46 
Agriculture,  new  life  in,  158- 

163 

A-lden,  John,  Duxbury  home 

of,  19 
Alden,      Priscilla,      Duxbury 

home  of,  19 
Ames,  Fisher,  cited,  187 
Apples    on    the    Cape,    146- 

147 

Artist    colony,    at    Province- 
town,  139 

Asparagus,  158 

Attaquin,  Hotel,  61 


B 


Ballston  Beach,  43 

Barnstable,  decline  of  shipping, 
207-208;  origin  of  name, 
103;  oysters  in,  202-203; 
population  of,  237;  settle- 
ment of,  23;  site  of  village, 
III;  village  described,  120- 
124 

Barnstable  Fair,  122 

Barnstable  Harbor,  missed  by 
exploring  party,  8 

Bayberry  candles,  173-174 

Beach  grass,  94,  96--99 

Bedrock,  in  the  Old  Colony, 

33-34 
Billingsgate,  105 
Billingsgate  Light,  83,  216 
Billington  family,  19 
BiUington  Sea,  18,  65 


Blackfish,  184-185 

Boulders,  of  the  glacial  drift, 
58-59 

Bourne,  name  of  town,  104- 
105 

Bourne  Hill,  38,  109 

Bourne,  Richard,  104-105, 
251 

Bradford,  William,  cited  on 
Plymouth  soil,  14;  History 
cited,  36;  manuscript,  20 

Brewster,  town  of,  early  days 
of,  24;  name  of,  105;  popu- 
lation of,  237;  shipmasters 
in,  209 

Brewster,  William,  Duxbury 
home  of,  19 

Brick- making,  1 71-172 

Bushnell,  Rev.  Horace,  cited, 

255 
Buzzards  Bay,  shores  of,  70, 
86-87 


Cahoon's  Hollow,  43 

Camp    Grounds,    Yarmouth, 

situation  of,  39 
Canal,  the   Cape    Cod,  220- 

226 
Cape  Cod,  limits  of,  15;  name 

of,  101-102;  origin  of,  32-68; 

unique,  3 
Centerville  Beach,  85-86 
Cereals,  in  the  Old  Colony, 

151  .     ^ 

Champlain,  visit  of,  6 
Channing,  Professor  Edward, 
quoted,  28 


279 


28o 


Index 


Chatham,  130-133;  lights  at, 
216;  location  of  village  of, 
no;  name  of,  104;   oysters 
at,  202;  population  of,  237; 
salt  industry  in,  168;  ship- 
ping of ,  210 
Chatham  Bars,  surf  on,  131 
Clam,  hardshell,  199-200;  soft- 
shell,  203 
Clark's  Island,  9,  85 
Clay  Pounds,  the,  57,  108,  215 
Cleveland,  Grover,  61,  119 
Cliffs  of  Cape  Cod,  42,  71 
Climate,  of  the  Old  Colony, 

260-264 
Coal,  barge  traffic  in,  205 
Codfish,  180,  188,  190-191 
Cole's  Hill,  burials  on,  13 
Corey  fruit  farm,  147-148 
Com,  Indian,  7,  144-145 
Cotuit,  oysters  at,  203 ;  site  of, 

113 
Craigsville  Beach,  85-86 
Cranberries,  123,  153-156 


Dangerfield,  early  name  of 
Truro,  25,  103 

Davis,  Wendell,  cited,  223 

Dead  Neck,  86 

De  Monts,  expedition  of,  6 

Dennis,  38,  40;  name  of,  105; 
scallop  fishing  in,  201 ;  ship- 
ping of,  208 ;  salt  industry  in, 
167 

Dunes  of  Cape  Cod,  88-100 

Duxbury,  Mayflower  families 
in,  19 

Duxbury  Bay,  15 

Duxbury  Beach,  9 

Dwight,  Timothy,  30,  74,  98- 
99,  271-272;  salt  industry, 
169-170 


Eastham,  asparagus  in,  158; 
history  of,  24;  Indian  name 
of,  104;  population  of,  237; 


salt  industry  in,  168;  ship- 
ping of,  210 

East  Harbor,  63,  83 

Elizabeth  Islands,  36 

Environment,  influence  of, 
257-260 

Everett,  William,  253 


Falmouth,  127-129;  bays  on 
shore  of,  53-54;  founding  of, 
26-27;  Indian  names  in, 
104,  105;  population  of,  237; 
Portuguese  in,  244-245 ;  sea- 
men's memorial  in,  264; 
shellfish  in,  203;  site  of  vil- 
lage of,  1 1 2-1 13;  straw- 
berries in,  156-157;  tax 
valuations  in ,  176-178 

Farm  Bureau,  Cape  Cod,  158- 
160 

Faunce,  Elder  Thomas,  253 

Faunce,  President  W.  H.  P., 

253 

Finns,  on  Cape  Cod,  247;  in 
town  of  Barnstable,  122 

Fish,  refrigerator  plants  for, 
193;  waste  disposal,  193; 
weirs,  192-193 

Fishing,  early  Pilgrim,  181- 
182;  colonial  develop- 
ment of,  185-186;  causes  of 
recent  decline,  188-190; 
freshwater,  195 

Forest  Dale,  Lombard  ranch 
at,  163 

Forests,  94-95»  no.  142-143; 
State  nursery,  164-165 

Freeman  family,  22 

Freeman,  Frederick,  cited,  32 

Freeman,  Rev.  James,  44,  215 

Fruit-growing,  in  the  Old 
Colony,  151 


German's  Hill,  109 
Glacial  deposits,  succession  of, 
68 


Index 


281 


Glacier,  the  Cape  Cod,  50-51; 

of  Buzzards  Bay,  51 
Glass  industry,  172 
Gorham,  Captain  John,  252 
Gorham,  Nathaniel,  252,  253 
Gosnold,      Bartholomew,      in 

Provincetown  Harbor,  5 
Great  Marshes,  the,  112,  122, 

149-150 
Grist  mills,  1 70-1 71 
Gurnet,  physical  character  of, 

84-85 
Gurnet  Lights,  4 


H 


Harwich,  founding  of,  23-24; 

sea  captains  in,  209 
Hatch ville,  ranch  at,  161- 162 
Herring  fisheries,  193-195 
High  Head,  42,  45,  71.  76 
Highland   Light,   4,   215-216; 

Cliffs  at,  57,  72,  108-109 
Highways  on  Cape  Cod,  228- 

231 
Hitchcock,  Dr.  Edward,  on  the 

Cape  Cod  glacier,  46-47;  on 

the  sands  of  the  Cape,  141 
Humane    Society,  the,  refuge 

huts  of,  44,  217-218 
Hyannis,    124-127;   name   of, 

106;  site  of,  113 


Italians  on  the  Cape,  247 
lyanough,    Indian    Chief,    23, 
106 


Jefferson,     Joseph,     61,     loi, 

119 
Jeremiah's  Gutter,  80-82 
Jones  River,  15 

K 

Keith  Car  Works,  173 
Kettle  holes,  glacial,  41,  51- 

52 
Kingston  Bay,  15 


Lakes,  of  Cape  Cod,  52-53;  of 
the  Old  Colony,  59-64; 
names  of,  106-108;  origin  of, 

41 
Lewis  Bay,  64 

Life-saving  stations,  219-220 
Lighthouses,  2 1 5-2 1 7 
Lightships,  217 
Lincoln,  Joseph  C,  267 
Lombard,  Dr.,  ranch  at  Forest 

Dale,  163 
Longnook,  valley  in  Truro,  43 
Lyde,  Professor  L.  W.,  cited, 

259,  260 
Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  46 

M 

McFarland,  R.,  History  of 
Fisheries,  cited,  187 

Mackerel  fishing,  188 

Mails,  early,  231-232 

Manomet,  Cliffs  of,  18,  84 

Manomet,  Hill,  39,  46,  109 

Manufacturing  in  the  Old  Col- 
ony, 166-167 

Maps  of  Old  Colony,  Note, 
67-68 

Marsh  lands,  salt,  148-150; 
fresh,  64-65 

Marshfield,  home  of  the  Wins- 
lows,  20 

Marston's  Mills,  name  of, 
106 

Martha's  Vineyard,  physical 
features  of,  27;  population 
of,  238 

Mashpee,  name  of,  104;  people 
of,  250-252;  population  of, 

237 
Mashpee    River,    herring    in, 

194 
Mayflower,  the,  3-4,  6 
Menauhant,  86 
Mills,  1 70-1 71 
Monamoyick,  104 
Monomoy,  74,  79,  88,  130 
Monumet  River,  66 


282 


Index 


Moon  cursing,  270 

Moraines,  Plymouth  to  Fal- 
mouth, 37;  Sandwich  to 
Orleans,  37-38;  on  Nan- 
tucket and  Martha's  Vine- 
yard, 48 

Morison,  Dr.  Samuel  E.,  252 

Mourt's  Relation,  cited,  15 


N 


Names,  1 01 -109;  English,  103- 
104;  Indian,  104-105,  108 

Nantucket,  physical  features 
of,  27;  population  of,  238 

Nantucket  Shoals,  6,  55,  213- 
214 

Nantucket  Sound,  214 

Nauset,  Beach,  79-80 

Nauset,  dunes  of,  88;  early 
name  of  Eastham,  104; 
plains  of,  41;  removal  from 
Plymouth  to,  21 

New  Bedford,  port  for  Portu- 
guese, 242-243 

Nobscusset,  104 

Nobska  Light,  traffic  near, 
205 

North  Truro,  name  of,  106 

Nursery  industry,  163-165 


Old   Colony,    the,    limits    of, 

15-16 
Onset,  village  of,  15 
Orleans,  133-135;  location  of 

village    of,     no,    113-114; 

name  of,   105;  Shipping  of, 

209-210 
Osterville,  harbor  of,  86;  name 

of,  106;  oysters  at,  203 
Otis,  Harrison  Gray,  252 
Otis,  John,  Senior,  252 
Otis,  John,  Junior,  252 
Otis,  James,  252 
Outwash  plain  of  Cape  Cod, 

40 
Oysters,  201-203 


Palfrey,  Professor  J.  G.,  212- 
213,253 

Pamet,  early  name  of  Truro, 
25,  103 

Pamet  River,  36,  43 

Peaked  Hill  Bar,  77 

Peat,  65 

Penzance,  36 

Pier  Head,  9 

Pilgrims,  the,  landing  of,  10; 
influence  of,  276-277 

Pilgrim  Monument,  4;  view  of 
dunes  from,  90 

Plymouth,  140;  fisheries  of, 
186,  187;  manufactures  in, 
174;  name  of,  6;  not  highly 
marine,  206;  salt  industry  in, 
167;  tourists  in,  17 

Plymouth  Beach,  84 

Plymouth  County,  farm  lands 
in,  150;  County,  population 
of,  238-239 

Pollock's  Rip,  131,  217 

Poponesset,  86 

Population,  233 

Portuguese,  the,  in  Barnstable 
County,  240-247;  fruit-rais- 
ing by,  156-157 

Powder  Hole,  63 

Pring,  Martin,  stay  in  Ply- 
mouth Harbor,  5 

Province  lands,  dunes  of,  88- 

91 
Provincetown,  137-140;  agri- 
culture in,  166;  early  history 
of,  25-26;  fisheries  of,  186, 
188;  name  of,  105;  popu- 
lation of,  236;  Portuguese 
in,    240-241;    shipping    of, 


Q 

Quahaug,  the,  203 
Quisset  Harbor,  64 


Race  Point  Light,  216 
Race  Run,  ^^,  90 


Index 


283 


Railroads,  in  the  Old  Colony, 

227-230 
Rich,    Rev.    Shebnah,    cited, 

226 


St.  George's  Shoals,  55 

Sagamore,  114-115;  car  works 
at,  173 

Salt  Hay,  148-150 

Salt-making,  167-170 

Samoset,  1 80-1 81 

Sand  dunes,  88-100 

Sandwich,  1 15-120;  fish  hatch- 
ery at,  195;  glass  factory  at, 
172;  location  of,  iii;  not 
maritime,  206;  settlement  of, 
21-22 

Sandy  Hook,  78 

Sandy  Neck,  23,  122-123; 
dunes  of,  88 

Saquish  Head,  9,  85 

Sawmills,  170 

Scallop,  the,  200-201 

Scargo  Hill,  38,  109 

Scorton  Xeck,  118 

Shaler,  X.  S.,  128,  273 

Sharks,  185 

Shaw,  Chief  Justice,  207-208, 

253 
Shellfish,  decline  of,  198-200 
Shipbuilding,  171- 172 
Shipwrecks,  about  Cape  Cod, 

214-215 
Shoot  Flying  Hill,  38,  108 
Small,  Isaac  Morton,  72 
Smith,    Captain    John,    maps 

Old  Colony  shores,  6;  names 

New  England,  102 
South  Channel  Glacier,  55-56 
Stage    Harbor,    64,    74,    130, 

132 
Standish,     Miles,    monument 

to,  i;  Ehixbury  home  of,  3, 

19-20;  excursions  from  Pro- 

vincetown       Harbor,       43 ; 

excursion  to  Barnstable  Bay, 

23 
Strawberries,  Cape  product  of, 

156-157 


Succanesset,  104 

Swifts,  the,  of  Chicago,  253 


Telegraph  Hill,  109 
Telegraph  lines,  232 
Thoreau,  H.  D.,  30,  92,  in, 

134,    135,    138,"    141,    169, 

184 
Tower,  W.  S.,  History  of  New 

England  Whaling  cited,  195- 

196 
Town  Brook,  11,  65-66 
Town  Cove,  79,  133,  135 
Town  Neck,  in  Sandwich,  117- 

118 
Treat,  Rev.  Samuel,  burial  of, 

262 
Truro,  Cape  products  in,  173- 

174;    early    history    of,    2^; 

fish-waste  disposal  in,    193; 

founding  of,  25;  location  of, 

no,  114;  name  of,  103-104; 

population  of,  236-237;  salt 

industry  in,  168;  shipping  of, 

210;  views  from  1-2 
Tudor,     Frederic,     on     Cape 

farming,  163 
Tupper  House,  Sandwich,  22 
Turpentine  industry,  171 


Van  EK^ke,  Henrv,  cited,  267- 

268  ' 
Vegetable  crops,  158-159 
Vikings,  the,  and  Cape  Cod, 

5 
Vineyard  Sound,  27 


W 

Waquoit  Shore,  86 
Wareham,  village  of,  15 
Webster,     Daniel,     at     Hotel 

Attaquin,  61;  fishing  guide 

of,  119 


284 


Index 


Wellfleet,  135-137;  fisheries  of, 

188;  founding  of,  24;  harbor 

of,  83,  84;  location  of,  no; 

name   of,    105;   oysters   at, 

202;    population    of,     237; 

shipping  of,  210,  21 1-2 12 
Whale  fishing,  beginnings  of, 

183-184;    large   growth   of, 

196-198 
Whido,  the  pirate  ship,  81 
White,  Peregrine,  20 
White,  Susannah,  20 
Whitman,  Rev.  Levi,  215 
Wianno,  name  of,  106 
Wind    work,    on    Cape    Cod, 

88-91 
Windmills,  29,  171 
Winslow,     Governor     Josiah, 

Marshfield  home  of,  20 
Winslow's  Relation^  cited,  143, 

260-261 


Winsor,  J.,  reference  to  Nar- 
rative and  Critical  History, 

5 
Winthrop,  James,  222 
Wood,  General  Leonard,  253 
Woods   Hole,    27,    137;    Fish 
Commission  at,    195;    loca- 
tion of ,  112;  name  of,   106; 
situation  of,  37;  traffic  of, 
206-207 
Wood  worth,      Professor     Jay 
Backus,      acknowledgment, 
see  Preface;  cited,  68 


Yarmouth,  beginnings  of,  23; 

camp  grounds  in,  39;  names 
_  of,  103,  104;  population  of, 

237;  salt  industry  in,  169 
Yarmouth  Port,  123 


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